"With an 8-core Rockchip RK3588S SoC, the Orange Pi 5 is leaps and bounds faster than the aging Raspberry Pi 4," writes Phoronix: With up to 32GB of RAM, the Orange Pi 5 is also capable of serving for a more diverse user-base and even has enough potential for assembling a budget Arm Linux developer desktop. I've been testing out the Orange Pi 5 the past few weeks and it's quite fast and nice for its low price point.

The Orange Pi 5 single board computer was announced last year and went up for pre-ordering at the end of 2022.... When it comes to the software support, among the officially available options for the Orange Pi 5 are Orange Pi OS, Ubuntu, Debian, Android, and Armbian. Other ARM Linux distributions will surely see varying levels of support while even the readily available ISO selection offered by Orange Pi is off to a great start....

Granted, the Orange Pi developer community isn't as large as that of the Raspberry Pi community or the current range of accessories and documentation, but for those more concerned about features and performance, the Orange Pi 5 is extremely interesting.
The article includes Orange Pi 5 specs:

• A 26-pin header
• HDMI 2.1, Gigabit LAN, M.2 PCIe 2.0, and USB3 connectivity
• A Mali G510 MP4 graphics processor, "which has open-source driver hope via the Panfrost driver stack."
• Four different versions with 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM using LPDDR4 or LPDDR4X. "The Orange Pi 4GB retails for ~$88, the Orange Pi 5 8GB version retails for $108, and the Orange Pi 5 16GB version retails for $138, while as of writing the 32GB version wasn't in stock."

In 169 performance benchmarks (compared to Raspberry Pi 4 boards), "this single board computer came out to delivering 2.85x the performance of the Raspberry Pi 400 overall." And through all this the average SoC temperature was 71 degrees with a peak of 85 degrees — without any extra heatsink or cooling.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On Tuesday, Google initiated the process of opening up Bard to the world by inviting users in the US and UK to sign up for access. It first demoed Bard in February, in a clear response to seeing ChatGPT take the world by storm over the holiday period, but is only now opening up access. Unfortunately for the search giant, the beta-ness of Bard is clear, with a first batch of adopters seemingly underwhelmed by its capabilities when compared with OpenAI's GPT-4 technology. Bard has had the odd hiccup already. A possible mistake made by the chatbot during its demo launch last month was followed by a $100 billion cratering in parent company Alphabet's valuation. Now testers say the current version of Bard isn't living up to the competition.

"I've been playing with Google Bard for a while today and I never thought I'd say this, but... Bing is way ahead of Google right now (at this specific chat feature)," tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee tweeted on Tuesday. Ethan Mollick, associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches entrepreneurship and innovation, added that although it's early, "Google's Bard does not seem as capable as a learning tool as Bing or GPT-4." Mollick notes that "Google's Bard loses" to its rival "by a lot" in poetry, struggling far more in its potential to generate a sestina, fixed verse form from France made up of 39 lines. A prompt to get Bard to generate a synopsis of a "Star Wars" movie in the style of filmmaker David Lynch, known for his off-kilter storytelling, ended up producing a bog-standard "Star Wars" plot. Bard also has issues handling word puzzles, an area where AIs powered by large language models should theoretically excel. Take Twofer Goofer, an online puzzle that involves users figuring out what a pair of mystery rhyming words are through slightly obtuse prompts and clues.

Google says it's ready to let the public use its generative AI chatbot,Bard. The company will grant tens of thousands of users access to the bot in a gradual rollout that starting Tuesday. From a report: Google says people will use the chatbot, which will be available online and as a mobile app, for things like generating ideas ("Bard, how do I keep my plants alive?"), researching ideas (in combination with Search), and drafting first drafts of letters, invites, or proposals. Google originally announced Bard February 6, alongside some generative AI search functions and developer tools. On March 14, it announced that it will integrate generative AI features across the apps in its Workspace productivity suite. But today marks the first time that Google has released a generative AI chatbot powered by a large language model to the public. Google says the bot is powered by a lightweight and optimized version of LaMDA, and will be updated with newer, more capable models over time.

Computer component maker Acer built a lightweight electric bike called the Acer ebii. Electrek reports: This lightweight 35 lb. (16 kg) e-bike features a number of gadgets and gizmos we have yet to spot in the industry, such as built-in AI designed to predictively control the transmission and make use of collision detection sensors for a safer ride. There's also proximity unlocking feature that the company says "automatically locks your bike when you leave and unlocks it again when you're nearby." My Gogoro electric scooter has a similar function, though that's a highway-capable vehicle.

Tracking capabilities are built into the ebii to help keep tabs on it 24/7. If the bike is ever stolen, it can be locked remotely and tracked using its built-in GPS locator. But don't think that you won't find typical bike parts here either, as the Acer ebii still features high-end components like a belt drive instead of a chain drive, 160mm hydraulic disc brakes, and 360-degree LED lighting. Airless tires are designed to remove the chance of flats, and a lefty-style fork does double duty as a conversation piece and a fancy weight saver.

There's also a 460 Wh electric bicycle battery that is said to offer a range of up to 68 miles (110 km) per charge. A top speed of 15 mph (25 km/h) and a 250W rear hub motor look to keep the bike within European and Asian power and speed limits. There's no hand throttle, which means riders will have to rely on pedal assist that is activated when the rider spins the pedals. It appears that there's some confusion about the 2.5-hour charger included with the bike, as some in the industry seem to think it can be used to charge phones and batteries as well. In fact, it's actually the e-bike's removable battery itself that can function as a portable power station to charge up your mobile devices. Pricing and availability are not yet available. But there is a launch video to build up excitement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The UK government is to invest 900 million pounds in a cutting-edge supercomputer as part of an artificial intelligence strategy that includes ensuring the country can build its own "BritGPT". The treasury outlined plans to spend around 900 million pounds on building an exascale computer, which would be several times more powerful than the UK's biggest computers, and establishing a new AI research body. An exascale computer can be used for training complex AI models, but also have other uses across science, industry and defense, including modeling weather forecasts and climate projections. The Treasury said the investment will "allow researchers to better understand climate change, power the discovery of new drugs and maximize our potential in AI.".

An exascale computer is one that can carry out more than one billion billion simple calculations a second, a metric known as an "exaflops". Only one such machine is known to exist, Frontier, which is housed at America's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and used for scientific research -- although supercomputers have such important military applications that it may be the case that others already exist but are not acknowledged by their owners. Frontier, which cost about 500 million pounds to produce and came online in 2022, is more than twice as powerful as the next fastest machine.

The Treasury said it would award a 1 million-pound prize every year for the next 10 years to the most groundbreaking AI research. The award will be called the Manchester Prize, in memory of the so-called Manchester Baby, a forerunner of the modern computer built at the University of Manchester in 1948. The government will also invest 2.5 billion pounds over the next decade in quantum technologies. Quantum computing is based on quantum physics -- which looks at how the subatomic particles that make up the universe work -- and quantum computers are capable of computing their way through vast numbers of different outcomes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission today finalized rules requiring mobile carriers to block robotext messages that are likely to be illegal. The FCC described the rules as the agency's "first regulations specifically targeting the increasing problem of scam text messages sent to consumers." Carriers will be required to block text messages that come from "invalid, unallocated, or unused numbers." Carriers must also block texts from "numbers that the subscriber to the number has self-identified as never sending text messages, and numbers that government agencies and other well-known entities identify as not used for texting," the FCC said. Carriers will have to establish a point of contact for text senders so the senders can inquire about blocked texts. The FCC already requires similar blocking of voice calls from these types of numbers. The order will take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register, according to a draft of the order released before the meeting.

More robotext rules may be on the way because today's "action also seeks public comment on further proposals to require providers to block texts from entities the FCC has cited as illegal robotexters," the FCC said. For example, the FCC proposes to clarify that Do Not Call Registry protections apply to text messaging. The FCC said it's further proposing to close the "lead generator loophole" that "allows companies to use a single consumer consent to deliver robocalls and text messages from multiple -- perhaps thousands -- of marketers on subjects that may not be what the consumer had in mind." The FCC "will also take further public comment on text authentication measures and other proposals to continue to fight illegal scam robotexts." The FCC separately voted today to close another gap in its Caller ID authentication rules that target illegal robocalls. The rules already required phone companies to implement the caller ID authentication technologies known as STIR and SHAKEN. But the rules don't apply in every possible scenario, so the FCC has periodically strengthened them. In June 2022, for example, the FCC required carriers with 100,000 or fewer customers to comply a year earlier than these small carriers were originally required to. The FCC said in a statement: "The new rules will require intermediate providers that receive unauthenticated IP calls directly from domestic originating providers to use STIR/SHAKEN to authenticate those calls. Although STIR/SHAKEN has been widely implemented under FCC rules, some originating providers are not capable of using the framework. In other cases, unscrupulous originating providers may deliberately fail to authenticate calls. By requiring the next provider in the call path to authenticate those calls, the FCC closes a gap in the caller ID authentication regime and facilitates government and industry efforts to identify and block illegal robocalls."

OpenAI's ChatGPT has taken the world by storm with its ability to give solutions to complex problems almost instantly and with nothing more than a text prompt. Up until yesterday, ChatGPT was based on GPT-3.5, a deep learning language model that was trained on an impressive 175 billion parameters. Now, it's based on GPT-4 (available for ChatGPT+ subscribers), capable of solving even more complex problems with greater accuracy (40% percent more likely to give factual responses). It's also capable of receiving images as a basis for interaction, instead of just text. While the company has chosen not to reveal how large GPT-4 is, they claim it scored in the 88th percentile on a number of tests, including the Uniform Bar Exam, LSAT, SAT Math and SAT Evidence-Based Reading & Writing exams.

ChatGPT is extremely capable but its responses largely depend on the questions or prompts you enter. In other words, the better you describe and phrase the problem/question, the better the results. We're already starting to see companies require that new hires know not only how to use ChatGPT but how to extract the most out of it.

That being said, we'd like to know how Slashdotters are using the chatbot. What are some of your favorite prompts? Have you used it to become more efficient at work? What about for coding? Please share specific prompts too to help us get similar results.

Logistics startup Zipline unveiled its next-generation delivery drone, dubbed the Platform 2 or P2 Zip. According to CNBC, the new drone is "capable of carrying up to eight pounds worth of cargo within a ten-mile radius, and can land a package on a space as small as a table or doorstep." That number is important because the vast majority of packages shipped in the U.S. "weigh five pounds or less," says Zipline CEO and co-founder Keller Rinaudo Cliffton. From the report: The P2 Zip can travel ten miles in ten minutes, and the company can make a delivery approximately seven times faster than any typical service you may order from today, the CEO said. Rapid deliveries by drone may put an end to "porch pirates," Rinaudo Cliffton said, referring to the theft of packages left on a doorstep while the customer is away from home. While Zipline's original drone, the P1 Zip, features a fixed wing or glider-like design, the P2 employs both lift and cruise propellers and a fixed wing. These help it maneuver precisely and quietly, even in rainy or windy weather.

To deliver cargo to a customer's door, the P2 Zip hovers around 300 feet above ground level and dispatches a kind of mini-aircraft and container called the "droid." The droid descends on a long thin tether, and maneuvers quietly into place with fan-like thrusters before setting down for package retrieval. Zipline's original P1 drones will remain in production and in wide use, says Rinaudo Cliffton. The P1 Zip can fly a longer distance, delivering up to five pounds of cargo within a 60-mile radius, but it requires a larger space for take off, landings and "the drop."

The P1 Zip lets cargo down with a parachute attached, so its payload lands within a space about the size of two car parking spots. After a P1 Zip returns to base, an employee needs to disassemble it, then set up a new one, dropping in a freshly charged battery for the next flight. Zipline's new P2 Zip can dock and power up autonomously at a charging station that looks something like a street lamp with an arm and a large disc attached to that arm. Zipline docks can be installed in a single parking spot or alongside a building depending on zoning and permits.

Amazon.com plans to launch its first internet satellites to space in the first half of 2024 and offer initial commercial tests shortly after, the company said Tuesday, as it prepares to vie with Elon Musk's SpaceX and others to provide broadband internet globally. Reuters reports: Amazon's satellite internet unit, Project Kuiper, will begin mass-producing the satellites later this year, the company said. Those will be the first of over 3,000 satellites the technology giant plans to launch in low-Earth orbit in the next few years. "We'll definitely be beta testing with commercial customers in 2024," Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon devices, said at a conference in Washington.

The 2024 deployment target would keep Amazon on track to fulfill a regulatory mandate to launch half its entire Kuiper network of 3,236 satellites by 2026. Limp, who oversees Amazon's consumer devices powerhouse, said the company plans to make "three to five" satellites a day to reach that goal. With plans to pump more than $10 billion into the Kuiper network, Amazon sees its experience producing millions of devices from its consumer electronics powerhouse as an edge over rival SpaceX, the Musk-owned space company whose Starlink network already has roughly 4,000 satellites in space.

Amazon plans to launch a pair of prototype satellites early this year aboard a new rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance. The 2024 launch, carrying the initial production satellites, is expected to be the first of many more in a swift deployment campaign using rockets Amazon procured in 2021 and 2022. The company on Tuesday also revealed a slate of three different terminals, or antennas, that will connect customers with its Kuiper satellites in orbit. In a blog post on Tuesday, Amazon detailed its new terminals with photos and pricing.

Standard Customer Terminal: "Project Kuiper's standard customer terminal measures less than 11 inches square and 1 inch thick. It weighs less than five pounds without its mounting bracket. Despite this modest footprint, the device will be one of the most powerful commercially available customer terminals of its size, delivering speeds up to 400 megabits per second (Mbps). Amazon expects to produce these terminals for less than $400 each."

"Most Affordable" Terminal: "A 7-inch square design will be Project Kuiper's smallest and most affordable customer terminal. Weighing just 1 pound and offering speeds up to 100 Mbps, its portability and affordability will create opportunities to serve even more customers around the world. This design will connect residential customers who need an even lower-cost model, as well as government and enterprise customers pursuing applications like ground mobility and internet of things (IoT)."

"Most Capable" Antenna Model: "Project Kuiper's largest, most capable model is designed for enterprise, government, and telecommunications applications that require even more bandwidth. The device measures 19 inches by 30 inches, and will deliver speeds up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps)."

Reuters reports: General Motors is exploring uses for ChatGPT as part of its broader collaboration with Microsoft, a company executive told Reuters. "ChatGPT is going to be in everything," GM Vice President Scott Miller said in an interview last week.

The chatbot could be used to access information on how to use vehicle features normally found in an owners manual, program functions such as a garage door code or integrate schedules from a calendar, Miller said. "This shift is not just about one single capability like the evolution of voice commands, but instead means that customers can expect their future vehicles to be far more capable and fresh overall when it comes to emerging technologies," a GM spokesperson said on Friday.
More details from Engadget: According to Semafor, the digital assistant will operate differently from other chatbots like Bing Chat. GM is reportedly working on adding a "car-specific layer" on top of the large language models that power ChatGPT.

James Temple reports via MIT Technology Review: In late January, a geothermal power startup began conducting an experiment deep below the desert floor of northern Nevada. It pumped water thousands of feet underground and then held it there, watching for what would happen. Geothermal power plants work by circulating water through hot rock deep beneath the surface. In most modern plants, it resurfaces at a well head, where it's hot enough to convert refrigerants or other fluids into vapor that cranks a turbine, generating electricity. But Houston-based Fervo Energy is testing out a new spin on the standard approach -- and on that day, its engineers and executives were simply interested in generating data.

The readings from gauges planted throughout the company's twin wells showed that pressure quickly began to build, as water that had nowhere else to go actually flexed the rock itself. When they finally released the valve, the output of water surged and it continued pumping out at higher-than-normal levels for hours. The results from the initial experiments -- which MIT Technology Review is reporting exclusively -- suggest Fervo can create flexible geothermal power plants, capable of ramping electricity output up or down as needed. Potentially more important, the system can store up energy for hours or even days and deliver it back over similar periods, effectively acting as a giant and very long-lasting battery. That means the plants could shut down production when solar and wind farms are cranking, and provide a rich stream of clean electricity when those sources flag.

There are remaining questions about how well, affordably, and safely this will work on larger scales. But if Fervo can build commercial plants with this added functionality, it will fill a critical gap in today's grids, making it cheaper and easier to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions from electricity systems. "We know that just generating and selling traditional geothermal is incredibly valuable to the grid," says Tim Latimer, chief executive and cofounder of Fervo. "But as time goes on, our ability to be responsive, and ramp up and down and do energy storage, is going to increase in value even more."

Silicon Valley VCs fearing a repeat of falling crypto values warn against pouring cash into hype-fuelled start-ups. From a report: Gordon Ritter, founder of San Francisco-based venture fund Emergence Capital, believes that recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence represent a significant technological advance. He just cannot see a way to make money out of them. "Everyone has stars in their eyes about what could happen," says Ritter, whose firm was an early investor in successful start ups such as Zoom. "There's a flow [of opinion that AI] will do everything. We're going against that flow." The scepticism reflects a tension among Silicon Valley VCs, who are caught between excitement over AI and a broader tech downturn that has led to falling investment in start-ups over the past year. But the recent launch of "generative AI" tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, capable of answering complex questions with text in natural-sounding language, has resulted in fresh excitement over the potential emergence of a new group of industry-defining companies.

[...] Many VCs express caution, put off not only by eye-watering valuations, but also the huge amount of capital AI groups require as they build "foundation models" -- machine-learning systems that require huge amounts of data and computing power to operate. One investor said that, because of the huge amount of capital and computing resources required, recent leaps in generative AI were comparable to landing on the moon: a massively impressive technical achievement, only replicable by those with nation-state level wealth. "Companies are extremely overvalued and the only justifiable investment thesis is to get in incredibly early," said another veteran investor. "Otherwise you're only buying in because of FOMO."

Britain's failed attempt to send satellites into orbit was a "disaster" and MPs are being urged to redirect funding to hospitals, with the country now seen as "toxic" for future launches. The Guardian reports: Senior figures at the Welsh company Space Forge, which lost a satellite when Virgin Orbit's Start Me Up mission failed to reach orbit, said a "seismic change" was needed for the UK to be appealing for space missions. Lengthy delays by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), as well as the launch failure, had left Space Forge six months behind its competition in the race to be the first company to bring a satellite back down to Earth, when it had been six months ahead, the science and technology committee heard.

Patrick McCall, a non-executive director at Space Forge, said: "The CAA is taking a different approach to risk, and a bit to process and timing as well. But I think unless there is, without wanting to be too dramatic, a seismic change in that approach, the UK is not going to be competitive from a launch perspective. I think the conclusion I've reached is right now it's not a good use of money, because our regulatory framework is not competitive." He added that the UK ought to consider spending the money it was investing in launch capability on other areas, such as hospitals.

Greg Clark, the chair of the committee, said it was a "disaster" that an attempt to show what the UK was capable of had turned "toxic for a privately funded launch." "We had the first attempted launch but the result is that you as an investor in space are saying there is no chance of investors supporting another launch from the UK with the current regulator conditions." Dan Hart, the CEO of Virgin Orbit, told MPs he had expected the CAA to work more similarly to the Federal Aviation Authority in the US but he had found the UK regulator more conservative. The company has since ended its contract with Spaceport Cornwall at Newquay airport but said it was still hoping to launch from the site in the future. Sir Stephen Hillier, the chair of the CAA, said: "Our primary duty is to ensure that the space activity in the UK is conducted safely. The CAA licensed in advance of technical readiness."

Apple has delayed the approval of an email-app update with AI-powered language tools over concerns that it could generate inappropriate content for children, according to communications Apple sent to the app maker. The software developer disagrees with Apple's decision. From a report: The dispute shows the broad concerns about whether language-generating artificial-intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, are ready for widespread use. Apple took steps last week to block an update of email app BlueMail because of concerns that a new AI feature in the app could show inappropriate content, according to Ben Volach, co-founder of BlueMail developer Blix, and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. BlueMail's new AI feature uses OpenAI's latest ChatGPT chatbot to help automate the writing of emails using the contents of prior emails and calendar events. ChatGPT allows users to converse with an AI in seemingly humanlike ways and is capable of advanced long-form writing on a variety of topics.

"Your app includes AI-generated content but does not appear to include content filtering at this time," Apple's app-review team said last week in a message to the developer reviewed by the Journal. The app-review team said that because the app could produce content not appropriate for all audiences, BlueMail should move up its age restriction to 17 and older, or include content filtering, the documents show. Mr. Volach says it has content-filtering capabilities. The app's restriction is currently set for users 4 years old and older. Apple's age restriction for 17 and older is for categories of apps that may include everything from offensive language to sexual content and references to drugs. Mr. Volach says that this request is unfair and that other apps with similar AI functions without age restrictions are already allowed for Apple users.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: Ford applied for a patent to make the repossession process go smoother. For the bank, that is. The patent document was submitted to the United States Patent Office in August 2021 but it was formally published Feb. 23. It's titled "Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle." It describes several ways to make the life of somebody who has missed several car payments harder.

It explicitly says the system, which could be installed on any future vehicle in the automaker's lineup with a data connection would be capable of "[disabling] a functionality of one or more components of the vehicle." Everything from the engine to the air conditioning. For vehicles with autonomous or semi-autonomous driving capability, the system could "move the vehicle from a first spot to a second spot that is more convenient for a tow truck to tow the vehicle... move the vehicle from the premises of the owner to a location such as, for example, the premises of the repossession agency," or, if the lending institution considers the "financial viability of executing a repossession procedure" to be unjustifiable, the vehicle could drive itself to the junkyard.

No other automakers have recently attempted to patent a similar system, and indeed the Ford patent doesn't reference any other legal document for the sake of clarifying its idea. All of this being said, patent documents, especially applications like this one, do not necessarily represent an automaker's intent to introduce the described feature, process, or technology to its vehicles. Ford might just be attempting to protect this idea for the sake of doing so. The document does go into a lot of detail as to how such a system might work, though.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cheap, light, flexible, yet robust circuit boards are critical for wearable electronics, among other applications. In the future, those electronics might be printed on flexible circuits made out of bacterial cultures used to make the popular fermented black tea drink called kombucha, according to a recent paper posted to the arXiv preprint server. "Nowadays kombucha is emerging as a promising candidate to produce sustainable textiles to be used as eco-friendly bio wearables," co-author Andrew Adamatzky, of the University of the West of England in Bristol, old New Scientist. "We will see that dried -- and hopefully living -- kombucha mats will be incorporated in smart wearables that extend the functionality of clothes and gadgets. We propose to develop smart eco-wearables which are a convergence of dead and alive biological matter."

Adamatzky previously co-authored a 2021 paper demonstrating that living kombucha mats showed dynamic electrical activity and stimulating responses, as well as a paper last year describing the development of a bacterial reactive glove to serve as a living electronic sensing device. Inspired by the potential of kombucha mats for wearable electronics, he and his latest co-authors have now demonstrated that it's possible to print electronic circuits onto dried SCOBY mats. The team used commercially sourced kombucha bacteria to grow their mats, then air-dried the cultures on plastic or paper at room temperature. The mats don't tear easily and are not easily destroyed, even when immersed in water for several days. One of the test mats even survived oven temperatures up to 200 C (392 F), although the mats will burn when exposed to an open flame. Adamatzky et al. were able to print conductive polymer circuits onto the dried kombucha mats with an aerosol jet printer and also successfully tested an alternative method of 3D printing a circuit out of a conductive polyester/copper mix. They could even attach small LEDs to the circuits with an epoxy adhesive spiked with silver, which were still functioning after repeatedly being bent and stretched.

According to Adamatzky et al., unlike the living kombucha mats he worked with previously, the dried SCOBY mats are non-conductive, confining the electrical current to the printed circuit. The mats are also lighter, cheaper, and more flexible than the ceramic or plastic alternatives. Potential applications include wearable heart rate monitors, for instance, and other kombucha-based devices. "Future research will be concerned with printing advanced functional circuits, capable for detecting -- and maybe recognizing -- mechanical, optical, and chemical stimuli," the authors concluded.

Microsoft president Brad Smith announced that the company has signed a 10-year deal to bring Xbox games -- including Call of Duty once it is acquired -- to Nintendo players. From a report: The signed deal means Microsoft is living up to its promise to the Federal Trade Commission that it will make Call of Duty available to other platform companies like Nintendo if its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard is approved. Smith said in a tweet, "This is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms." The binding agreement means that Nintendo players will get the games on the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity, so they can experience Call of Duty just as Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty.

Microsoft said it is committed to providing long-term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms. The FTC has sued Microsoft for potential antitrust claims, and Microsoft has not yet been able to strike a similar deal with Sony, which is trying to get regulators to quash the deal. The feature parity claim is interesting because I think it means that Microsoft will bring the game to a new Nintendo console that hasn't been announced yet, as such a machine would be able to run the full Call of Duty game. The Nintendo Switch isn't capable of running the full Call of Duty, I believe.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last year, Sony AI and Polyphony Digital, the developers of Gran Turismo, developed a new AI agent that is able to race at a world-class level. At the time, the experiment was described in a paper in Nature, where the researchers showed that this AI was not only capable of driving very fast -- something other AI have done in the past -- but also learned tactics, strategy, and even racing etiquette. At the time, GT Sophy -- the name of the AI -- wasn't quite ready for prime time. For example, it often passed opponents at the earliest opportunity on a straight, allowing itself to be overtaken in the next braking zone.

And unlike human players, GT Sophy would try to overtake players with impending time penalties -- humans would just wait for that penalized car to slow to gain the place. But in the intervening year, Sony AI and Polyphony Digital have been working on GT Sophy, and tomorrow (February 21), GT Sophy rolls out to Gran Turismo 7 as part of update 1.29, at least for a limited time. Until the end of March, players can try their skills against Sophy in the GT Sophy Race Together mode in a series of races with increasing difficulty levels. There's also a one-versus-one match where you race Sophy in identical cars, so you can see how much slower you are than the AI.

"No massive cooling towers, miles of concrete, expansive evacuation zones," writes the Washington Post, describing modular nuclear reactors instead as "space-age plants that can be small enough to fit in a large backyard," using "downsized" reactors like the ones on nuclear-powered submarines.

And America's coal country "is a ripe target for this experiment, with infrastructure that can be repurposed, capable workforces and communities eager to reclaim prominence in the energy economy." More than 300 retired and operating coal plants in the United States are good candidates for a nuclear conversion, according to a recent Department of Energy report that has touched off a frenzy of activity. Communities that previously rejected nuclear power as unsafe or a threat to the coal industry are now clamoring to be a part of what might be branded nuclear 2.0. "See that hilltop over there?" said Michael Hatfield, a former coal company engineer who is now the administrator for Wise County [in Virginia]. "If you put a nuclear plant someplace like that, it is not going to be near anybody's backyard. This would keep us in the forefront of the energy business. We see it as our future...."

It was only a year ago that nuclear power was banned in West Virginia, under a state law intended to protect the coal industry. The state is among several to either lift such a ban or pass a law encouraging development of small nuclear reactors over the last few years. Political leaders see opportunities to boost regional economies and to get a piece of the billions of dollars in subsidies for generating "advanced nuclear" power available through the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act.... Virginia is among at least eight states pursuing a small reactor. At least another eight have launched feasibility studies, according to federal energy officials.
And back in Washington D.C. there's also high hopes for the technology: U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry said in a recent interview with The Post that the technology's success is vital for meeting the world's goal of avoiding the most catastrophic fallout from climate change by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

"I don't think we get there without it," Kerry said.

There may soon come a time when your car "also serves as the hub of your personal power plant," writes the Washington Post's climate columnist. And then they tell the story of a New Mexico man named Nate Graham who connected a power strip and a $150 inverter to his Chevy Bolt EV during a power outage: The Bolt's battery powered his refrigerator, lights and other crucial devices with ease. As the rest of his neighborhood outside Albuquerque languished in darkness, Graham's family life continued virtually unchanged. "It was a complete game changer making power outages a nonissue," says Graham, 35, a manager at a software company. "It lasted a day-and-a-half, but it could have gone much longer." Today, Graham primarily powers his home appliances with rooftop solar panels and, when the power goes out, his Chevy Bolt. He has cut his monthly energy bill from about $220 to $8 per month. "I'm not a rich person, but it was relatively easy," says Graham "You wind up in a magical position with no [natural] gas, no oil and no gasoline bill."

Graham is a preview of what some automakers are now promising anyone with an EV: An enormous home battery on wheels that can reverse the flow of electricity to power the entire home through the main electric panel. Beyond serving as an emissions-free backup generator, the EV has the potential of revolutionizing the car's role in American society, transforming it from an enabler of a carbon-intensive existence into a key step in the nation's transition into renewable energy.
Some crucial context from the article:

• Since 2000, the number of major outages in America's power grid "has risen from less than two dozen to more than 180 per year, based on federal data, the Wall Street Journal reports... Residential electricity prices, which have risen 21 percent since 2008, are predicted to keep climbing as utilities spend more than $1 trillion upgrading infrastructure, erecting transmission lines for renewable energy and protecting against extreme weather."

• About 8% of U.S. homeowners have installed solar panels, and "an increasing number are adding home batteries from companies such as LG, Tesla and Panasonic... capable of storing energy and discharging electricity."

• Ford's "Lightning" electrified F-150 "doubles as a generator... Instead of plugging appliances into the truck, the truck plugs into the house, replacing the grid."

• "The idea is companies like Sunrun, along with utilities, will recruit vehicles like the F-150 Lightning to form virtual power plants. These networks of thousands or millions of devices can supply electricity during critical times."