SonyThe Sony CES 2025 keynote will begin soon and you can watch it, and follow our coverage live, right here. The Afeela electric vehicle dominated Sony's 2023 and 2024 CES press conferences and it appears that trend will continue this year, with an appearance at the Sony event (and a followup press conference) already confirmed. This represents a change for Sony, a CES mainstay company, as its better known for its decades in the consumer electronics space with its Walkman portables and Trinitron TVs of old along with next-gen PlayStation consoles and Alpha cameras.What to expect at Sony's CES 2025 press conferenceThe Afeela is the first product from Sony Honda Mobility, a joint venture between the Japanese electronics and transportation giants. After a surprise rollout at CES 2023, the Sony CES presser teed up additional details on the EV's LiDAR-heavy sensor array and AI-enhanced cabin tech (the latter coming with an assist from Microsoft) at CES 2024. If the car's previously announced scheduling waypoints preorders in 2025 ahead of 2026 availability remain intact, we're hoping to hear which of the Afeela's concept car niceties will actually make the cut once it enters the streets of the real world.Of course, it won't be all Afeela all the time in Vegas. Expect Sony to spend time talking up its imaging, gaming or maybe even its movie studio division. And with any luck, we'll get more info on the company's XR headset, which was shown off at the 2024 show, only to never be seen again. CES 2025 would be the perfect place to show off a meaty update of a possible competitor to the Apple Vision Pro.Watch the Sony CES 2025 livestreamYou can watch the Sony CES press conference as it happens below. The feed will start Monday, January 6 at 8:00PM ET.The separate Afeela press conference will take place on Tuesday, January 7 at 4:30PM PT, and will be streamed on YouTube as well.Follow real-time CES updates on our liveblogThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/sony-ces-2025-keynote-watch-sony-unveil-its-latest-gadgets-live-here-212207568.html?src=rss

UFC CEO Dana White is joining Meta's board, the company announced today. The addition of the mixed-martial arts impresario jives with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's well-documented UFC fandom, but also the larger strategy Meta appears to be using heading into a second Trump term: tacking right.That's not to say White's seat on the board is typical, however. Most of Meta's current board members work in the tech industry. The two members Meta is adding alongside White, John Elkann and Charlie Songhurst, fit the social media company's usual bill. White might say he's "a huge believer that social media and AI are the future" in Meta's press release, but the company he keeps is likely the more important reason he's joining now.Dana White and President-elect Donald Trump have been friends for years. White supported Trump's campaign for re-election, and UFC as a whole fits his strong-man tastes. Putting White on the board is as much about burnishing Zuckerberg's self-image as it is having access to the incoming Trump Administration. The President-elect might at one point have thought that Zuckerberg should "spend the rest of his life in prison," but Meta's CEO is doing everything in his power to court him.Zuckerberg visited Mar-A-Lago in November 2024 to have dinner with Trump, one of several tech CEOs to do so. Meta's also been adjusting its executive ranks to better work with a conservative government. The company's former President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg announced he was stepping down just last week, to be replaced by Meta's most prominent Republican executive, Joel Kaplan. Among Kaplan's credits is an eight-year stint in the Bush Administration. Zuckerberg has been in UFC mode for a while now, and it seems like for at least the next four years, Meta will be too.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-adds-ufc-ceo-and-trump-booster-dana-white-to-its-board-230611306.html?src=rss

CES 2025 is full swing and Samsung has already made a slew of laptop and TV announcements, but the company already has more news on the horizon. The company is hosting it's first Galaxy Unpacked event on January 22, 2025 at 1 PM ET to show off the latest in Galaxy AI, and presumably new Galaxy devices it runs on.Samsung is hosting its event in San Jose, and like previous years, even if it hasn't shared what its actually announcing, you can reserve the company's new gear in advance for a $50 off and the chance to win a $5,000 Samsung gift card. That's on top of Samsung's typically generous trade-in credit this year the company says you can get up to an additional $900 credit if you trade-in an old device.Given the timing of Unpacked, Samsung is likely to announce the Galaxy S25 series, and there's a good chance it'll use the new Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and sport an updated design, at least on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. What might be more interesting are the non-smartphone devices Samsung could show off. The company is rumored to already have a Galaxy Ring 2 in the works, and there's a good chance Samsung's "Project Moohan" Android XR headset could make an appearance at the event.Engadget will have all the details of Samsung's announcements right here, but if you want to watch the event yourself, you'll be able to tune in on Samsung.com, Samsung's Newsroom or the company's YouTube channel.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/samsungs-first-unpacked-event-of-2025-will-be-on-january-22-230035883.html?src=rss

Looking for Quordle clues? We can help. Plus get the answers to Quordle today and past solutions.

Looking for NYT Strands answers and hints? Here's all you need to know to solve today's game, including the spangram.

Looking for NYT Connections answers and hints? Here's all you need to know to solve today's game, plus my commentary on the puzzles.

On Sunday OpenAI cofounder and CEO Sam Altman published a blog post titled Reflections about his companys progressand the speed bumps along the wayduring its first nine years. Altmans words are important because OpenAI has a very good chance of being first to reach AGI, or artificial general intelligence (machines that are generally as smart or smarter than humans), then progressing on toward superintelligent systems (which are far smarter than humans). And these systems, when applied in the real world, could affect all of us in profound ways. Altmans comments, however, might illuminate this transition a bit more with some added context.First off, the blog post was spurred by an interview Altman recently did with Bloomberg. According to Bloomberg, the OpenAI PR team suggested an interview in which Altman would review the past two years, reflect on some events and decisions, to clarify a few things.Sam Altman says OpenAI has shifted to a next paradigm of modelsAltman appears to refer to the new o1 model and o3 models, which take a different approach to intelligence than the earlier models that power ChatGPT. Those earlier models relied on massive amounts of training data and computing power during pre-training. But o1 and o3 apply more computing power at inference time (or test time), then the model is actually working on a complex problem for a user.How ChatGPT came aboutSam Altman describes the run up to the event that changed everything for OpenAI, the public launch of the ChatGPT chatbot on November 30th of 2022. We had been watching people use the playground feature of our API and knew that developers were really enjoying talking to the model, Altman writes. We thought building a demo around that experience would show people something important about the future and help us make our models better and safer. The playground feature he refers to was at the time called Chat With GPT-3.5. He tells Bloombergs Josh Tyrangiel in a new interview that the rest of the company was like, Why are you making us launch this? Its a bad decision. Its not ready. I dont make a lot of were gonna do this thing decisions, but this was one of them.Altman sees the world through the eyes of an entrepreneurThe first effect of the explosion of ChatGPT that Altman mentions is, interestingly, about growth and financial reward. The launch of ChatGPT kicked off a growth curve like nothing we have ever seen . . . We are finally seeing some of the massive upside . . . Altman studied computer scienceincluding AIas an undergraduate, but he is not an AI researcher. Hes spent most of his career as an expert in funding and growing technology startup companies. He was president of Y Combinator, the prestigious startup accelerator, from 2014 to 2019.Altman puts some context around his November 2023 firingAfter Altmans surprise firing, the OpenAI board of directors cited trust issues and concerns over the CEOs handling of AI safety measures. Board member Helen Toner (an AI safety expert) said Altman gave inaccurate information about safety processes, and did not inform the board before launching ChatGPT. (Employees and VCs with financial interest in the company revolted and Altman was quickly reinstated as CEO.) Altman says the turmoil was partly the result of rapid change happening within the company at the time. We had to build an entire company almost from scratch (around ChatGPT) . . . he writes. Moving at speed in uncharted waters is an incredible experience, but it is also immensely stressful for all the players . . . conflicts and misunderstanding abound . . . He adds that the last two years have been the most unpleasant years of my life so far.Altman says the old board, and himself, were to blameAltman calls the members of the former board, which included OpenAI founder and AI mastermind Ilya Sutskever, well-meaning, and takes responsibility for the November 2023 blowup. But he also implies that the former board lacked perspective to govern a company with OpenAIs unique technology, challenges, and goals. The whole event was, in my opinion, a big failure of governance by well-meaning people, myself included . . . I also learned the importance of a board with diverse viewpoints and broad experience in managing a complex set of challenges . . .Some new color on Altmans reinstatement as CEOThe longest part of the blog is a footnote about legendary investor Ron Conway and AirBnB founder Brian Chesky, both of whom are longtime friends of Altman. The full story of what went on behind the scenes after Altman was fired has never been thoroughly reported. But Altman suggests that Conway and Chesky may have done more than just support and advise.I am reasonably confident OpenAI would have fallen apart without their help . . . Altman writes. They used their vast networks for everything needed and were able to navigate many complex situations. Conway and Chesky may have played a role in rallying OpenAI employees and investors around Altman, and against the board that fired him.Sam Altman tries the explain the brain drain at OpenAIThis is perhaps the second major issue OpenAI hoped to address in the Bloomberg interviewthe growing number of smart people who have left OpenAI over the past year, including CTO Mira Murati and cofounder Ilya Sutskever. Teams tend to turn over as they scale, and OpenAI scales really fast . . . At OpenAI numbers go up by orders of magnitude every few months, Altman writes. When any company grows and evolves so fast, interests naturally diverge. Altman suggests that researchers will naturally depart as the companys research priorities shift. Theres truth in that. And OpenAIs research priorities did hit a big bend in the road during 2024 with the o1 models.Why new products and growth are so important to OpenAIWhen the main thrust of AI research is figuring out how to apply more computing power to AI models, being an AI startup is a extremely capital-intensive business. OpenAIs founders didnt see that coming, Altman says. OpenAI and its investors are already spending billions on computing power to train and operate frontier AI models. Theyre spending more on acquiring new training data. In the future, OpenAIs pursuit of superintelligence will require much bigger server clusters, and more capital expense to find and buy the electricity needed to power them. There are new things we have to go build now that we didnt understand a few years ago, and there will be new things in the future we can barely imagine now, Altman writes.OpenAI believes it knows how to build AGIAltman suggests that his company has either already developed systems that can be described as AGI, or that such systems are squarely within its sights. Hes referring to agentic systems that can reason through complex tasks and control external systems. Its important to note, however, that OpenAI changed its definition of AGI in 2018. Originally, the company defined it as a system with the learning and reasoning powers of a human mind. Now its charter defines AGI as highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable workOpenAIs next frontier is superintelligenceSuperintelligence means systems capable of far greater intelligence than humans in a broad array of fields. While AGI could make a big difference in terms of human productivity, superintelligence could bring answers to problems that humans currently cant solve (curing cancer, for example). Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity, Altman writes. But it would also mean the beginning of an era in which humans are no longer the smartest entities in our environment.

Contract talks covering 45,000 dockworkers on the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts are set to restart on Tuesday in a labor dispute that will help set the pace of automation at ports stretching from Maine to Texas.The International Longshoremens Association (ILA) wants to eliminate past labor-contract concessions on automationnotably the use of semi-automated cranes that stack containers on docksarguing they pose a threat to jobs.The United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group, meanwhile, argues those rail-mounted gantry cranes are key to remaining competitive as ports, most notably in China, lead the way on automation.If the two sides do not reach a deal by Jan. 15, workers at container ports that handle more than half of U.S. ocean imports could start a strike just days before President-elect Donald Trumps Jan. 20 inauguration.A three-day strike by the ILA last October triggered a spike in shipping prices and cargo backlogs at the 36 affected ports.The union and employers, which have issued dueling statements in recent weeks, did not comment separately for this article.Past regretsNearly two decades ago, port employers convinced an earlier group of ILA leaders that using semi-automated cranes at what is now known as Norfolk International Terminals would eventually help create thousands of new jobs, the union said.Those cranes replaced equipment like specialized human-operated forklifts known as top loaders, and have been introduced at a handful of other U.S. port terminals since.The cranes can handle bigger container stacks than traditional equipment, expanding capacity on the dock, and can work overnight arranging containers for pickup the next day, with little human involvement. Placing containers on the trailers of trucks waiting to whisk them away is still handled by joystick-wielding human operators.What seemed like a win for one port turned out to be the project that is becoming the model for automation that could potentially chip away at many jobs at almost every other terminal along the East and Gulf Coasts, Dennis Daggett, the ILAs executive vice president, said in December.Union President Harold Daggett, Dennis Daggetts father, has called for absolute airtight contract language stating that there will be no automation or semi-automation at port terminals.Employers, who recently battled the ILA over the installation of automated truck entry gates, say the nations economic growth relies on faster and more efficient ports.Modern technology is proven to dramatically increase the amount of cargo that can be moved through a port, the maritime employers group said in December. This can, and will, be done in a way that not only protects jobs, but adds new jobs as our operations expand.The group includes terminal operators like APM, owned by Danish container carrier Maersk, as well as the U.S. arms of other major carriers like Chinas COSCO Shipping and Switzerlands MSC.They agreed to a 62% wage increase over the next six years to end the October strike and underscored that the pay rise is contingent on finalizing all outstanding issues including automation.Is automation the answerU.S. port executives and unions say there are many other ways to boost port efficiency, including by sharing incoming cargo data to match staffing with demand, and installing cranes that can pluck two containers off a ship at a time instead of one.While automation has increased productivity in factories that turn out cars and other goods, early results suggest that benefits to seaports could be much more limited.Major export ports in China have relatively stable cargo flows that are more suited to automation, but top U.S. ports in Los Angeles/Long Beach and New York/New Jersey have big swings in volume.Fixed automated systems cannot expand and contract with cargo flows like human crews and may not reduce labor costs enough to justify hefty equipment costs, authors of a 2021 report from the International Transport Forum at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said.There are just 53 container port terminals around the world, or about 4% of global capacity, with some form of automation, they said.Automated ports are generally not more productive than their conventional counterparts.Lisa Baertlein, Reuters

Chinas Trina Solar has set a new world record for the conversion efficiency of a certain type of solar module, the company said in a statement on Monday.In laboratory tests, Trinas large-surface-area n-type fully passivated heterojunction (HJT) modules demonstrated an efficiency of 25.44%, according to the results certified by the Fraunhofer CalLab in Germany, a solar research body.Passivation is a technology that covers defects on the surface of a solar cell, while cell efficiency refers to the percentage of solar energy hitting a device that is converted into usable electricity. Increasing cell efficiency can help reduce the size needed for solar installations as well as cut costs.Professor Martin Green at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, whose lab held the solar cell efficiency record for decades, said the result demonstrated the potential of HJT solar technology, one of several contending to become the predominant next-generation technology for the sector.In the long run its all about efficiency, so even if some sequences are at the moment more costly than others, what tends to happen is that as the industry gets itself into a new technology the cost comes down quite quickly, Green told Reuters.Trinas chairman and CEO Gao Jifan said the company will continue to increase its research and development in passivated solar technology to maintain its technology leadership.HJT remains a relatively small percentage of the market, estimated by solar consultancy InfoLink to make up 7% of high-efficiency solar cell capacity in 2024, 8% in 2025 and 9% in 2026. TopCON, or tunnel activated passive contact, cells are expected to make up the bulk of the market over the next five years.In addition to representing a record for HJT technology, the results are a new milestone for the photoelectric conversion efficiency of single-crystalline silicon solar cell modules, Trina said in the statement. (This story has been refiled to fix a typo in paragraph 3)Colleen Howe and Lewis Jackson, Reuters

In the dynamic world of industrial design, where innovation meets practicality, recognition can serve as a vital catalyst for growth. Entering the Core77 Design Awards offers designers, teams, organizations and students an unparalleled opportunity to showcase work, gain credibility, and connect with a global community of creatives. The 2025 awards include 20 categories to enter from apps and platforms to lifestyle accessories and can include client work to self-initiated projects and entrepreneurial engagements. Our hand-picked panel of esteemed Jury Captains lead the charge in selecting Award winners. Every Captain builds their own jury team of design experts to ensure a broadly informed discussion and deliberation, which also offers award entrants a unique chance to share work with diverse industry leaders. Winners are celebrated on Core77.com and our social channels, reaching a global audience of peers, educators, and clients. Plus, who wouldnt want to take home the coveted Core77 Design Awards trophy?Since 2011, the Core77 Design Awards has celebrated the journey from idea to innovation.The 2024 Core77 Design Awards are now open for entry to allget started on your entry now!Early Bird Pricing period starts today and ends on January 30th, Regular Pricing Deadline is February 27th, and Final Pricing Deadline is on March 25th.