Is the promise of jobs worth all the water and chemicals it takes to manufacture chips in the Arizona desert?
Video generators like Sora rely on a monoculture that no longer exists — and their creations are straight-up trash.
Dave Baszucki went on the Hard Fork podcast to talk about child safety on Roblox after its recent news that age estimation will be required to chat starting next year, and the conversation got pretty adversarial. Worth reading or listening to in full.
[The New York Times]
Over one year after its release on PS5 and PC, the Silent Hill 2 remake has finally made its way to Xbox Series X | S consoles. To celebrate its release, Konami is making Silent Hill 2 available on Xbox and PS5 for $34.99 instead of $69.99 for a limited time, with a similar discount coming to PC next week.
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[Konami Digital Entertainment]
Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity has blown the doors open on the great AI browser fight.
A blaze broke out in the conference venue Thursday, just ahead of negotiations scheduled to come to a close today in Brazil.
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Verge Score
The latest smartphone-sized reader comes with a lot of new features. They’re not all upgrades.
The White House drafted an executive order to preempt state AI laws, according to a copy obtained by The Verge, but some Trump allies worry it won’t work. “I don’t think the executive branch has the authority to enforce preemption on the states,” Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) told Punchbowl News.
[Punchbowl News]
I don’t like where Windows is going. Gaming on Linux has never been more approachable. Time to give it a shot.
The company shared new details about its Pocket Vert this week. Its minimal controls mimic the Game Boy with a D-pad and action buttons, but the Android-based handheld also features a hidden multipurpose touchpad beneath its front glass panel that can be used as a thumbstick for playing 3D games.
Yesterday Microsoft announced it’s making the classic Zork games open-source, and apparently some folks have gotten a little excited about it.
alectrem:
no need to fork zork when you can uncork zork straight from the zork zource, its like the opposite of zork divorce in zork court due to a zork tort
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Hot on the heels of a second successful launch — and first successful landing — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has announced the next version of its rocket. The New Glenn 9x4 — named for its number of engines — should operate alongside the existing 7x2, and could compete more closely with SpaceX’s Starship.
Samsung promoted its head of consumer hardware to co-CEO, joining Young Hyun Jun, head of the memory business. Roh led mobile since 2020, taking on TVs and appliances in an acting role this year, which is now permanent too.
The shuffle follows the death of former co-CEO Jong-Hee Han in March.
[Samsung Newsroom]
Everyone expected drama after Ubisoft delayed its financials at the last minute — a sale, a disruption to the Tencent deal, something else!? — but the reality is less thrilling.
Bloomberg reports Ubisoft “improperly booked sales from a partnership as revenue,” requiring it to correct its accounts and putting it in breach of a loan agreement.
It’s the first international expansion of Amazon’s upgraded, AI-powered Alexa, which launched first in the US. Amazon plans to invite “tens of thousands of Canadians every week to enjoy the new experience,” according to a blog post.
Valve’s big hardware push: you asked, we answered.
In addition to aiding students (maybe a little too much), now OpenAI is taking aim at teachers with a version of ChatGPT that’s supposed to provide them with a “secure workspace” to prepare lessons, create quizzes, or adapt assignments. ChatGPT for teachers is available to educators for free until June 2027.
Documents released by the House Oversight Committee shed light on Epstein’s day-to-day, largely via email — including his preoccupation with his Google presence.
Turns out splitting the musical into two movies was a pretty solid idea.
It’s a roguelike deckbuilder / dungeon crawler game called Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors and it’s set to launch next year. It’s “hopefully the first in a series of spin-offs,” Vampire Survivors creator Luca Galante tells Xbox Wire.
We put Google’s ‘most intelligent’ AI model to the test.
