January 29, 20253 min readTrump Asks SpaceX to Return NASAsStrandedAstronauts toEarthASAPDespite a recent request from Trump,NASAastronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmorewere alreadyscheduled to return to Earth on a Crew Dragon capsule this springBy Mike Wall & SPACE.com NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on the International Space Station. Nasa/Imago/Alamy Stock PhotoWell, this is something of a head-scratcher.On Tuesday evening (Jan. 28), President Donald Trump announced that he has another task for SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who is already leading a cost- and regulation-cutting effort called the Department of Governmental Efficiency."I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to 'go get' the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration. They have been waiting for many months on Space Station. Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck Elon!!!" Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. The message was also published on X, the social media site that Musk owns.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Presumably, Trump means NASA's Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been living on the orbiting lab since June 2024.They arrived on the first crewed mission of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which was supposed to last just 10 days or so. However, Starliner suffered issues with its thrusters, and NASA extended Williams' and Wilmore's orbital stay while it and Boeing studied the problem.In August, the agency decided not to risk putting the duo on Starliner for the trip home. The capsule would return to Earth uncrewed (which it did without incident in September), and Wilmore and Williams would come home in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule the vehicle flying the company's Crew-9 mission, which launched to the ISS on Sept. 28.This decision forced some crew shuffling; NASA had to take two astronauts off the originally four-person Crew-9 launch to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the downward leg. (Both Starliner astronauts are in good health on the ISS, and there are plenty of supplies to support them through the end of their stay, NASA officials have said.)Trump didn't mention this existing homecoming plan in his post. And neither did Musk, who referenced the president's request before it was published on X."The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so. Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long," Musk wrote in an X post on Tuesday afternoon.It's unclear what "as soon as possible" means in this context. Crew-9 had originally been slated to come home in late February, but that timeline has been pushed back at least a month so that SpaceX can complete work to ready the Crew Dragon that will fly the four-person Crew-10 mission to the ISS. The Crew-10 Dragon is a brand-new (rather than flight-proven) vehicle, and the company wants a bit more time to check everything out.Does Musk mean to imply that SpaceX will work to bring Crew-9 home before Crew-10 is ready to launch? NASA probably would not be too happy with that plan, as Ars Technica's Eric Berger noted. It would leave Don Pettit as the only NASA astronaut aboard the ISS for a stretch; he'd have to perform a lot of science and operations work by himself until reinforcements arrived.Or could SpaceX switch Crew-10's Dragon, swapping it out for a flight-proven one to enable an earlier launch? After all, the company has four Crew Dragons that have carried astronauts to and from orbit before Endeavour, Endurance, Freedom and Resilience. (Freedom is flying the Crew-9 mission and is therefore already at the ISS.)It's also possible that Trump and Musk, who has apparently become quite close with the president, are mainly playing politics with the situation. Both blamed the Biden administration for Williams' and Wilmore's extended ISS stay, after all.Or maybe they're simply trolling, something that both men perhaps the two most powerful people in the world very much like to do.Copyright 2025 Space.com, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

OpinionJanuary 29, 20254 min readWhat Trumps First Days Say about Science in the New AdministrationTrump seems intent on freezing out professional scientists, especially those with strong academic research backgrounds. Instead, he is stocking the leadership of federal agencies with technologists and loyalistsBy Michael S. Lubell & Philip Rubin edited by Daniel VerganoUS President Donald Trump holds an executive order announcing the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, he just signed during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty ImagesAlmost lost in the recent maelstrom of President Donald Trumps frenetic norm-breaking conduct is an ominous forecast for science. Just days have passed since Trump returned to the Oval Office, but his executive orders and nominations provide early clues about how the second Trump administration could shatter the remarkable science and technology engine that has driven the American economy for more than three quarters of a century.On the campaign trail, Trump promised to slash federal spending, fire agency experts he deemed rogue and take a sledgehammer to fact-based policies that didnt suit his whims. With the assistance of his Capitol Hill allies, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, and his mega financial campaign backer Elon Musk, head of the newly created advisory group known as DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), he is beginning to deliver on his pledges.Trumps nominees for many high-level administrative posts bear ample testimony to his disdain for science. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whom he has tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is perhaps the most obvious case. A lawyer by training and an antivaccine peddler and conspiracy theorist by reputation, he would have authority over the direction of the National Institutes of Health, the nations biomedical research gem with a budget of almost $50 billion a year.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.But hes not the only one. Chris Wright, a fracking executive and Trumps choice for energy secretary, is not an outright climate change denier, but hes skeptical of the scientific consensus that a hotter planet is causing more frequent extreme weather events. While he acknowledges the impact of carbon emissions on global warming, he continues to promote increased production and use of fossil fuels. Youd have to twist yourself into a pretzel to reconcile those two viewpoints scientifically. Of course, hes echoing the centerpiece of Trumps energy policy: Drill, baby, drill.These two appointments only serve to reinforce Trumps own rejection of science. Hes falsely claimed that climate change is a hoax; hes railed against windmills, calling them, without scientific evidence, whale killers; hes blamed the recent Los Angeles wildfires on the closure of a valve on a water pipeline that doesnt exist; and, in his first term, he promoted dangerous quack medicines to combat COVID. Hes said he wants clean air and clean water, but contrary to good science, hes promoting a return to coal for producing electricity and is in the midst of hijacking Californias water management practices that carefully control salinity in the SacramentoSan Joaquin Delta.You need only look at two executive actions with international ramifications to begin to grasp the scope of Trumps war on science. On day one of his new administration, he announced Americas exit from both the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization. Science, which is international in character, simply doesnt have a seat at Trumps America First table.These arent the only indicators of where science is likely to be heading in the next few years under Trump. Whereas presidents in the postWorld War II era generally put a high value on scientific expertise, Trump seems intent on freezing out professional scientists, especially those with strong academic research backgrounds. Instead he is stocking the leadership of federal agencies with technologists. Admittedly some have an admiration and strong appreciation for science. For the most part, however, their credentials speak of transactional policymaking and a buy-in to the Silicon Valley culture of breaking things before fixing them.That tech bro culture, which has captured Trumps imagination, has little appetite for patiencean essential and necessary facet of the kind of fundamental research that ultimately fuels Americas science and technology engine. Musk and other members of the PayPal Mafia who are advising Trump, might deliver impressive economic returns in the here and now, but such benefits would almost certainly come at the expense of a sputtering science and technology engine in the future.A few of Trumps prospective appointments and their credentials illustrate where he places an emphasis.David Sacks who would lead the Presidents Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, better known by its acronym PCAST, is a lawyer and venture capitalist, known for his involvement with AI and cryptocurrency, which he would oversee as the administrations czar.Michael Kratsios, who would direct the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and serve as the presidents science adviser, received favorable reviews from the science community when he served as OSTPs chief technology officer and interim director in Trumps first term. But his educational background in politics and Hellenic studies is certainly out of the ordinary. He has been managing director at an AI company for the last three years, putting him in the technologists camp.Emil Michael, who would serve as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering is a former Uber executive. He is a businessman with a legal education, not the accomplished engineering one typically found in a technical Pentagon role.Dario Gil, whom Trump has tapped to be undersecretary of energy for science and innovation, is perhaps an exception, having served as chairman of the National Science Board and as IBMs director of research. His professional profile speaks to his capabilities, but by training and experience he is more of a technologist than a scientist.Leadership and policies matter, but the quality of the federal science workforce and federal science budgets are just as important. During his first week in office, Trump established a government-wide hiring freeze and took steps that would allow him to replace a class of federal workers with Trump loyalists, both threatening the continuity and freedom from overt political interference that science requires. On the funding side, science support is caught in a vise between Republican plans to reduce taxes and increase defense spending, while constraining the size of the federal debt. Thats the future. The present? All federal grants have just been suspended until grantees show that they dont run afoul of Trumps unilateral executive orders. (The grant suspension was then temporarily paused by a federal judge.)Absent greater public awareness the ominous forecast will turn into inevitability.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Sony pulls controversial PSN account requirements for Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and other games on PCAs it launches PSN in-game incentives.Image credit: Insomniac Games/Sony News by Matt Wales News Reporter Published on Jan. 29, 2025 Sony is dropping its formerly mandatory PlayStation Network account requirements across a select number of its predominantly single-player titles on PC - but it's introducing in-game content "benefits" as an incentive to continue using one.Sony faced a major backlash last May when it announced it would be retroactively making PSN accounts mandatory for Helldivers 2 on PC - and while it eventually relented, that hasn't stopped it from requiring PSN accounts to play an increasing number of its PC ports since then. It's a move that's proven contentious among PC players, particularly given its original justification for PSN accounts on PC - to ensure the "safety and security" of online play - is considerably less convincing when many affected titles are single-player games.But now, Sony has announced something of a U-turn, confirming it'll be removing mandatory PSN account requirements from a number of its previously released and upcoming PC titles: God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (which launches this week), and The Last of US Part 2 Remastered (currently due in April).To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Xbox Developer Direct - four promising games also coming to PlayStation.Watch on YouTubeHowever, while PlayStation Network accounts will become "optional" for these games, Sony is still eager enough for players to continue using them that it's announced a new in-game content unlock initiative for PSN on PC that's coming "soon" to the above games.For instance, players that sign into a PlayStation Network account for Spider-Man 2 will unlock the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 Suit early. PSN accounts will also grant access to the Nora Valiant outfit in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.Over in God of War Ragnarok, a PSN account lets players unlocks Kratos' Armour of the Black Bear set at the first Lost Items chest in the Realm Between Realms rather than waiting until New Game Plus, and there's also a resource bundle containing 500 Hacksilver and 250 XP.As for The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, a PSN account unlocks an Ellie skin inspired by Jordan's jack in Naughty Dog's upcoming Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, as well as 50 additional points to activate bonus features and unlock extras.Sony hasn't yet said if it'll be making PSN accounts optional for all its all future single-player focused PC releases (or if the changes mean impacted games will now go back on sale in territories without PSN), but it did confirm more PSN incentives are on the way. "Game creators at PlayStation Studios will continue to work on bringing more benefits to players who sign up for a PSN account," it wrote, "so be sure to follow studio channels for more information."

Pokmon TCG Pocket players brand trading system "a joke" and "downright greedy""As a whale, this game isn't getting another dime from me."Image credit: Pokmon News by Tom Phillips Editor-in-Chief Published on Jan. 29, 2025 A new update to Pokmon TCG Pocket has added the ability for players to trade cards, but the mechanics of the system have come under intense criticism from fans. Trading require players use up valuable resources and adhere to a lengthy list of restrictions in order to acquire cards they don't already have. "Let's face it, the game does NOT want you to trade cards," is the title of one thread on the Pokmon TCG Pocket reddit, which is awash with complaints, memes and outright disbelief at how trading has been implemented.In general, trading is limited to players on your friends list, and only one trade can be conducted at a time. Currently, only cards of One, Two, Three or Four Diamond rarity can be offered for trade, alongside One Star rarity. (To be clear: you cannot trade Two or Three Star or One Crown rarity.)Beyond that, trading is subject to further rules. Firstly, you can only trade cards of the same rarity - meaning a trade for a One Diamond rarity card will mean you have to offer up another One Diamond rarity card in return, limiting the selection of cards that can be offered for trade with each other.Next, you will need to use Trade Stamina, which recharges over time or change be boosted using Trade Hourglasses. In addition to this, if you trade cards of a Three Diamond rarity or higher you'll also need to expend Trade Tokens, another consumable that can be earned in-game. Three Diamond rarity cards require 120 Tokens, One Star cards require 400 Tokens, while Four Diamond cards require 500 Trade Tokens.Want some more rules? Go on, then. Cards with a Flair can only be exchanged for cards with a Flair. And you can only currently trade cards from the game's Genetic Apex and Mythical Island booster packs. Promo cards cannot be traded.Trade Tokens can be acquired by junking other cards, but fans have complained at the amount of cards required in order to gather enough Tokens. For example, you will receive 100 Trade Tokens for junking a One Star card, but it will cost 400 Trade Tokens in total to trade for another One Star card."It's simple - the game doesn't want anyone trading cards," wrote on fan. "It's rubbish.""If (and that's a big if) they hand it out like flair dust it'll get easier," wrote another in a different reddit thread. "But right now, it's insanely expensive to trade, and I highly doubt they make trade tokens as easy to accumulate.""This trading update is an insult," wrote a player who described themselves as a whale - a heavy spender on the game - that was never the target audience for trading as they had bought so many packs already. "This just feels awful for everyone else," the continued. "It simply doesn't work. It fits such a narrow scenario of someone who is missing card X but happens to have a bunch of dupes to burn. So insanely narrow. It's just frustrating. The greed is just so excessive I can't be inclined to spend another $."They should probably remove 'Trading Card Game' from the title screen. It's just insulting to look at."If you're trying to navigate the new update, Eurogamer can help out with a guide to Pokmon TCG Pocket trading and how to trade cards, as well as a deeper dive into Pokmon TCG Pocket Trade Tokens and how to get them.Why is the trading system so prohibitive? It's likely that any mechanic that could stop players buying packs will have to be balanced by high costs to ensure the game continues to make money. Will the system get changed? While the game continues to rake in cash, it seems unlikely.

Seattle Blender User Group on Saturday, Feb. 1st By ogbog on January 29, 2025 Usermeetings Users in Seattle are meeting again for a Saturday morning filled with Blender.When: Saturday, February 1st, 10 AM to 1 PMWhere: Academy of Interactive Entertainment, 305 Harrison St #405 Seattle, WAWhat: This Saturday, join your fellow Blender artists for a morning of 3D demos, shenanigans, philosophizing, and solutions! We'll look at Blender for concept art, with a mix of thumbnailing, 3D block-ins, kitbashing, paintovers, and every other trick in the book to get a killer keyframe. We'll also dig into grease pencil pipelines that utilize its newfound friendship with geometry nodes. But also, nothing makes Seabug smooth like butter than when our awesome attendees bring their cool new projects in and blow us away, so bring your cool new project in and show us!See you there,--OscarP.S. Here's the Meetup link!P.P.S. Can't make it in person? We also hang out online on Thursday nights!

The narrative that OpenAI, Microsoft, and freshly minted White House AI czar David Sacks are now pushing to explain why DeepSeek was able to create a large language model that outpaces OpenAIs while spending orders of magnitude less money and using older chips is that DeepSeek used OpenAIs data unfairly and without compensation. Sound familiar?BothBloomberg and the Financial Times are reporting that Microsoft and OpenAI have been probing whether DeepSeek improperly trained the R1 model that is taking the AI world by storm on the outputs of OpenAI models.Here is how the Bloomberg article begins: Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI are investigating whether data output from OpenAIs technology was obtained in an unauthorized manner by a group linked to Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek, according to people familiar with the matter. The story goes on to say that Such activity could violate OpenAIs terms of service or could indicate the group acted to remove OpenAIs restrictions on how much data they could obtain, the people said.The venture capitalist and new Trump administration member David Sacks, meanwhile, said that there is substantial evidence that DeepSeek distilled the knowledge out of OpenAIs models.Theres a technique in AI called distillation, which youre going to hear a lot about, and its when one model learns from another model, effectively what happens is that the student model asks the parent model a lot of questions, just like a human would learn, but AIs can do this asking millions of questions, and they can essentially mimic the reasoning process they learn from the parent model and they can kind of suck the knowledge of the parent model, Sacks told Fox News. Theres substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the knowledge out of OpenAIs models and I dont think OpenAI is very happy about this.I will explain what this means in a moment, but first: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahhahahahahahahahahahahaha. It is, as many have already pointed out, incredibly ironic that OpenAI, a company that has been obtaining large amounts of data from all of humankind largely in an unauthorized manner, and, in some cases, in violation of the terms of service of those from whom they have been taking from, is now complaining about the very practices by which it has built its company.The argument that OpenAI, and every artificial intelligence company who has been sued for surreptitiously and indiscriminately sucking up whatever data it can find on the internet is not that they are not sucking up all of this data, it is that they are sucking up this data and they are allowed to do so.OpenAI is currently being sued by the New York Times for training on its articles, and its argument is that this is perfectly fine under copyright law fair use protections.Training AI models using publicly available internet materials is fair use, as supported by long-standing and widely accepted precedents. We view this principle as fair to creators, necessary for innovators, and critical for US competitiveness, OpenAI wrote in a blog post. In its motion to dismiss in court, OpenAI wrote it has long been clear that the non-consumptive use of copyrighted material (like large language model training) is protected by fair use.OpenAI and Microsoft are essentially now whining about being beaten at its own game by DeepSeek. But additionally, part of OpenAIs argument in the New York Times case is that the only way to make a generalist large language model that performs well is by sucking up gigantic amounts of data. It tells the court that it needs a huge amount of data to make a generalist language model, meaning any one source of data is not that important. This is funny, because DeepSeek managed to make a large language model that rivals and outpaces OpenAIs own without falling into the more data = better model trap. Instead, DeepSeek used a reinforcement learning strategy that its paper claims is far more efficient than weve seen other AI companies do.OpenAIs motion to dismiss the New York Times lawsuit states as part of its argument that the key to generalist language models is scale, meaning that part of its argument is that any individual piece of stolen content cannot make a large language model, and that what allows OpenAI to make industry-leading large language models is this idea of scale. OpenAIs lawyers quote from a New York Times article about this strategy as part of their argument: The amount of data needed was staggering to create GPT-3, it wrote. It was that unprecedented scale that allowed the model to internalize not only a map of human language, but achieve a level of adaptabilityand emergent intelligencethat no one thought possible.As Sacks mentioned, distillation is an established principle in artificial intelligence research, and its something that is done all the time to refine and improve the accuracy of smaller large language models. This process is so normalized in deep learning that the most often cited paper about it was coauthored by Geoffrey Hinton, part of a body of work that just earned him the Nobel Prize. Hintons paper specifically suggests that distillation is a way to make large language models more efficient, and that distilling works very well for transferring knowledge from an ensemble or from a large highly regularized model into a smaller, distilled model.An IBM article on distillation notes The LLMs with the highest capabilities are, in most cases, too costly and computationally demanding to be accessible to many would-be users like hobbyists, startups or research institutions knowledge distillation has emerged as an important means of transferring the advanced capabilities of large, often proprietary models to smaller, often open-source models. As such, it has become an important tool in the democratization of generative AI.In late December, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took what many people saw as a veiled shot at DeepSeek, immediately after the release of DeepSeek V3, an earlier DeepSeek model. It is (relatively) easy to copy something that you know works, Altman tweeted. It is extremely hard to do something new, risky, and difficult when you dont know if it will work.Its also extremely hard to rally a big talented research team to charge a new hill in the fog together, he added. This is the key to driving progress forward.Even this is ridiculous, though. Besides being trained on huge amounts of other peoples data, OpenAIs work builds on research pioneered by Google, which itself builds on earlier academic research. This is, simply, how artificial intelligence research (and scientific research more broadly) works.This is all to say that, if OpenAI argues that it is legal for the company to train on whatever it wants for whatever reason it wants, then it stands to reason that it doesnt have much of a leg to stand on when competitors use common strategies used in the world of machine learning to make their own models. But of course, it is going with the argument that it must protect [its] IP.We know PRC based companies and others are constantly trying to distill the models of leading US AI companies, an OpenAI spokesperson told Bloomberg. As the leading builder of AI, we engage in countermeasures to protect our IP, including a careful process for which frontier capabilities to include in released models, and believe as we go forward that it is critically important that we are working closely with the US government to best protect the most capable models from efforts by adversaries and competitors to take US technology.Jason is a cofounder of 404 Media. He was previously the editor-in-chief of Motherboard. He loves the Freedom of Information Act and surfing.More from Jason Koebler

The AI bubble hasnt burst yet, at least when it comes to consumer spending on AI apps. Led by OpenAIs ChatGPT, overall spending on AI apps jumped to $1.42 billion in 2024, according to app analytics firm Appfigures. This marks a 274% increase from 2023 (the app launched in May of that year). Among tens of thousands of competitor apps some of which license OpenAIs own technology ChatGPT is so dominant that it has consistently earned more than the aggregate revenue of other top AI assistant apps.The success of these apps is also a boon for Apple and Google, which retain about 30% of revenue from in-app purchases. Overall, mobile AI apps constitute a $2 billion market, according to Appfigures.ChatGPT has been downloaded 353 million times to date, but the demographics that use the app are skewed. Over half of ChatGPTs mobile users are under age 25, indicating that perhaps young people are more open to experimenting with new technology (or, maybe, these users just want help with their homework the Pew Research Center estimates that a quarter of U.S. teens have used ChatGPT for schoolwork, which has doubled from 2023).However, users between ages 50 and 64 make up the second largest age demographic, with 20.2% of users.The gender gap among ChatGPT users is even more significant. Appfigures estimates that across age groups, men make up 84.5% of all users.Though women hold prominent roles in the AI industry, a Pew report from 2022 indicates that women tend to be more skeptical about AI than men; an Axios poll found that 53% of women surveyed would not allow their children to use AI at all, as opposed to 26% of men. Meanwhile, McKinsey estimates that women will be more likely to lose their jobs to automation than their male counterparts, which could drive further resistance.Women might also be less enthusiastic about the mass adoption of consumer AI products because they are particularly vulnerable to the most sinister impacts of this technology, like sexually explicit deepfake images.ChatGPT is solidly winning the lions share of AI app spending, but with DeepSeek coming on the market as a free, open source alternative, the OpenAI app may see slight headwinds. DeepSeek has already dethroned OpenAI as the top app in the App Store, but maintaining its current level of hype could be a challenge for the Chinese AI app.

Took Your TimeSony finally sees sense by making it optional to sign-in to a PSN account for single-player games like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered on PC, but doing so will net you some bonuses nowDon't expect it for every game though.Image credit: Guerilla Games News by Oisin Kuhnke Contributor Published on Jan. 29, 2025 After months of complaints from fans, Sony is removing the PSN requirement on some of its single-player PC ports, even if it clearly wants you to do so anyway.PlayStation has steadily been adding some of its biggest games onto Steam over the past few years, but more recently it's been forcing players to sign in to a PSN account to even play them in the first place. That proved very controversial with Helldivers 2, so that was walked back, but it stuck with it right through to the recent Horizon Zero Dawn remaster, essentially locking out millions of potential players from buying the game at all as PSN isn't available in every country (in fact, there's a whole lot of countries that don't have PSN). There's some good news today though: Sony is removing that PSN requirement for a select few games.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Over on the PlayStation Blog, it was shared that starting with tomorrow's release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 for PC, Sony is "working to add more benefits to playing with an account for PlayStation Network." This also applies to the upcoming port of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, as well as God of War Ragnarok, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Those benefits? In-game unlocks! But the actual important point from the blog is this: "An account for PlayStation Network will become optional for these titles on PC." Yes, that means a whole lot more people can play those four titles.The fact that signing in to a PSN account nets you bonuses like an early unlock for the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 Suit in Spider-Man 2, and, uh, 50 points for bonus features and extras in The Last of Us Part 2, clearly shows that Sony would still rather people connect their accounts.It's worth noting that the sign-in requirement isn't being removed for titles like Until Dawn, another single-player game, so time will only tell if this becomes Sony does for all of its games - I imagine it'll continue requiring it for online titles, as the online Legends mode in Ghost of Tsushima also still requires a PSN account. Sony didn't say when the sign-in requirement is being removed for titles other than Spider-Man 2, so just keep your eyes peeled I suppose!

After MoviePasss historic implosion, subscribers to the Netflix for movie theaters were already cautious around the companys 2023 relaunch. These moviegoers may grow even more skeptical after MoviePass sent out an email blast on Wednesday, which surveyed customers about their interest in web3.Artificial Intelligence andBlockchain technologies are transforming the business landscape at an unprecedented pace, the email says. As a community-driven company, wed love to understand your interest and knowledge in the blockchain space.The survey asks basic questions about the respondents familiarity with web3, like if they own any assets like NFTs, or if they have a digital wallet. Customers were also asked whether they believe blockchain technology is promising, and if theyre interested in learning more about it.MoviePasss possible pivot to web3 didnt come out of nowhere. When the company relaunched, it raised seed funding from Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based software company and venture capital firm that specializes in blockchain technology. Last year, MoviePass partnered with the Sui blockchain to allow subscribers to make payments with USDC, a cryptocurrency pegged to the price of the U.S. dollar.At the time, MoviePass co-founder Stacy Spikes said that MoviePass intended to use web3 as a means of making moviegoing more accessible and able to reach a wider audience through deeper fan engagement. The company said it was looking toward offering on-chain rewards for seeing movies, or allowing users to invest in the movies they see (there are no further details about how that would actually work). Its not clear that fans want these on-chain bonuses, though, or if that sort of blockchain infrastructure would even help the company succeed. In some cases, adding crypto elements to a company that functions perfectly fine without it can alienate users rather than entice them. Patreon also once surveyed its users about their interest in crypto, but the creator membership platform was met with a clear no.Without adding in a web3 component, the new-and-improved MoviePass already turned its first-ever profit in 2023. While the first version of MoviePass was impossibly unsustainable subscribers could see unlimited movies in theaters for just $10, less than the cost of one movie ticket the new iteration of MoviePass makes a more modest offer. Now, MoviePass operates on a somewhat confusing credits system, where each movie showing can be redeemed for a certain number of credits, which fluctuates depending on the time of day and the format of the screening (IMAX, 3D, etc). For subscribers who live in places where movie tickets cost more, like New York City or Los Angeles, their monthly fee will be higher.Last February, MoviePass announced that subscribers had seen 1 million movies through its offerings, but it did not specify how many subscribers it has.

Climate change increased the likelihood of the recent Southern California wildfires by 35%, according to a new study published by World Weather Attribution, a decade-old international group of climate scientists and other experts.The study comes as Los Angeles residents start to rebuild their lives in the wake of catastrophic fires that erupted earlier this month. The fires were sparked by near perfect conditions: The two preceding years were unusually wet, boosting the growth of wildfire-adapted vegetation. This year, climate change dealt the region two heavy blows a delayed annual rainy season and intense Santa Ana winds that fanned the flames and spread embers far and wide.These extreme weather conditions will be more common, according to the study, adding fresh urgency to a burgeoning group of climate adaptation startups that hope to blunt the impact of wildfires.The extreme weather conditions are now likely to occur once every 17 years. Compared to a 1.3C cooler climate this is an increase in likelihood of about 35%, the studys authors wrote. This trend is however not linear, they added, stating that the frequency of fire-prone years has been increasing rapidly in recent years.Southern California is no stranger to fire. Its ecosystems have evolved to handle and even thrive under regular, low-intensity wildfires. But over a century of fire suppression disrupted the natural regime, and in its absence, people have built deeper into fire-adapted ecosystems.Today, these areas are known as the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, and the density of housing there complicates the picture. Because the landscape has been carved up into smaller parcels, removing excess vegetation often falls on individual homeowners, who may not realize theyre responsible for the task.Elsewhere, its often best to introduce prescribed burning, in which land managers start low-intensity fires during weather conditions that make the low-intensity blaze easy to contain and direct. The process helps rebalance the ecosystem and prevent dry brush from building up. But even in places where prescribed burning is possible, its still difficult to introduce, requiring public buy-in and well-trained crews.Startups have stepped into the void. Vibrant Planet has developed a platform that helps utilities and land managers analyze a range of data to determine where wildfire risk is highest. Then, it helps them work with a range of stakeholders, including landowners, conservation organizations, and indigenous groups, to develop plans to mitigate the risk.Once plans are in place, other startups step in to do the dirty work. One company, Kodama, retrofits forestry equipment for remote operation, allowing forests to be thinned at lower costs, reducing the fuel load that can lead to catastrophic wildfire.Another, BurnBot, has developed a remotely operated machine that does the work of a prescribed burn in the relative safety of its metal shroud. There, propane torches burn vegetation as it slides under the machine. Fans on top of the machine keep air flowing into the burn chamber, raising the fires temperature to reduce smoke and embers. At the rear of the machine, rollers and water misters extinguish any flames or embers that remain on the ground.But even with vegetation management and prescribed burning, the climate and ecosystems of Southern California wont be completely wildfire free. To further minimize the risk of catastrophic fires, another slate of startups is working to spot wildfires soon after they ignite so crews can respond quickly.Pano, for example, uses AI to crunch a range of data sources, including cameras, satellite imagery, field sensors, and emergency alerts, to automatically detect new fires. Google is also in the game, having worked with Muon Space to launch FireSat, which can image wildfires from orbit every 20 minutes.And should wildfires escape early detection and containment, other startups like FireDome are developing tools to protect homes and businesses. The Israel-based startup has created an AI-assisted fire defense system that launches projectiles filed with fire retardants. The automated system can lay down a perimeter of retardant before fire reaches a property or, if embers are already flying, it can target hotspots to extinguish flames before they turn into conflagrations.Land owners and managers will have to get smarter about how to limit their risk. Theres unlikely to be a single solution, but rather a combination of advanced technology and old fashioned land management.