Asteroids were responsible for extinction events hundreds of millions of years ago on Earth, providing no shortage of doomsday film plots for Hollywood.But researchers focused on asteroid tracking are on a mission to locate them for todays real-world concerns: planetary defense.The new and unexpected discovery tool applied in this research is NASAs James Web Space Telescope (JWST), which was tapped for views of these asteroids from previous research and enabled by NVIDIA accelerated computing.An international team of researchers, led by MIT physicists, reported on the cover of Nature this week how the new method was able to spot 10-meter asteroids within the main asteroid belt located between Jupiter and Mars.These rocks in space can range from the size of a bus to several Costco stores in width and deliver destruction to cities on Earth.The finding of more than 100 space rocks of this size marks the smallest asteroids ever detected in the main asteroid belt. Previously, the smallest asteroids spotted measured more than half a mile in diameter.Researchers say the novel method tapping into previous studies, asteroid synthetic movement tracking and infrared observations will help identify and track orbital movements of asteroids likely to approach Earth, supporting asteroid defense efforts.We have been able to detect near-Earth objects down to 10 meters in size when they are really close to Earth, Artem Burdanov, the studys co-lead author and a research scientist in MITs Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, told MIT News. We now have a way of spotting these small asteroids when they are much farther away, so we can do more precise orbital tracking, which is key for planetary defense.New research has also supported follow-up observations on asteroid 2024YR4, which is on a potential collision course with Earth by 2032.Capturing Asteroid Images With Infrared JWST Driven by NVIDIA GPUsObservatories typically look at the reflected light off asteroids to determine their size, which can be inaccurate. Using a telescope with infrared, like the JWST, can help track the thermal signals of asteroids for a more precise way at gauging their size.Asteroid hunters focused on planetary defense are looking out for near-Earth asteroids. These rocks have orbits around the Sun that are within 28 million miles of Earths orbit. And any asteroid around 450 feet long is capable of demolishing a sizable city.The asteroid papers co-authors included MIT professors of planetary science co-lead Julien de Wit and Richard Binzel. Contributions from international institutions included the University of Liege in Belgium, Charles University in the Czech Republic, the European Space Agency, and institutions in Germany including the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the University of Oldenburg.The work was supported by the NVIDIA Academic Grant Program.Harnessing GPUs to Save the Planet From AsteroidsThe 2024YR4 near-Earth asteroid estimated as wide as 300 feet and capable of destroying a city the size of New York has a 2.3% chance of striking Earth.Movies like Armageddon provide fictional solutions, like implanting a nuclear bomb, but its unclear how this could play out off screen.The JWST technology will soon be the only telescope capable of tracking the space rock as it moves away from Earth before coming back.The new study used the JWST, the best-ever telescope in the infrared, on images of TRAPPIST-1, a star studied to search for signs of atmospheres around its seven terrestrial planets and located about 40 light years from Earth. The data include more than 10,000 images of the star.After processing the images from JWST to study TRAPPIST-1s planets, the researchers considered whether they could do more with the datasets. Theyre looking at if they can search for otherwise undetectable asteroids using JWSTs infrared capabilities and a new detection technique they had deployed on other datasets called synthetic tracking.The researchers applied synthetic tracking methods, which doesnt require previous information on an asteroids motion. Instead it does fully blind search by testing possible shifts, like velocity vectors.Such techniques are computationally intense, and they created bottlenecks until NVIDIA GPUs were applied to such work in recent years. Harnessing GPU-based synthetic tracking increases the scientific return on resources when conducting exoplanet transit-search surveys by recovering serendipitous asteroid detections, the study said.After applying their GPU-based framework for detecting asteroids in targeted exoplanet surveys, the researchers were able to detect eight known and 139 unknown asteroids, the papers authors noted.Todays GPU technology was key to unlocking the scientific achievement of detecting the small-asteroid population of the main belt, but there is more to it in the form of planetary-defense efforts, said de Wit. Since our study, the potential Earth-impactor 2024YR4 has been detected, and we now know that JWST can observe such an asteroid all the way out to the main belt as they move away from Earth before coming back. And in fact, JWST will do just that soon.Gif attribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_YR4#/media/File:2024_YR4_ESO-VLT.gif

If youve played a Hazelight Studios game before, you know that the characters they create for you and your co-op partner come with unique personalities, backgrounds, and motivations that produce unforgettable moments as their stories unfold.Play VideoHazelight Studios is keeping that trend up as they introduce two new player characters in Split Fiction, which is launching on March 6 on PS5. Take control of two unpublished authors, Mio and Zoe, who you will quickly find are worlds apart! When you first meet Mio and Zoe, they have been lured into Rader Publishing Headquarters with the promise of a potential publishing deal which goes horribly wrong, trapping them inside a simulation of their stories which you have to help them escape. In this blog, were diving deeper into their characters so that you can confidently pick your favourite when you get your hands on the game!Mio Hudson Science Fiction authorReserved. Decisive. Realist. Introvert.Raised in the city with her father, Mio has barely scraped by for the last couple of years. She isnt looking for fame or recognition as an author, shes just in it for the money. Her love for all things sci-fi is reflected in her literary works, taking place in neon-lit cyberpunk cities, harsh futuristic weapon plants, and even in the coldness of outer space.Expect to see her love for sci-fi shine through in the abilities she gains inside the simulations, where she may become a gravity-defying ninja equipped with a lethally sharp energy sword, wear an advanced exosuit that grants remote control of drones, or dual-wield laser blasters in futuristic combat armour.Zoe Foster Fantasy authorCharismatic. Empathetic. Optimist. Extrovert.A cheerful countryside girl with a deep need to prove to her family that shes not a complete failure. Zoe hopes that a publishing deal will solve all of her problems. Fantasy is her favoured genre, with her portfolio containing works of fiction about escaping towns overrun by trolls, battling through forests against an impending ice age, and protecting the last dragons from extinction.Given her love for the fantastical, you can look forward to seeing Zoe as a magical shapeshifter flying across the lands as a fairy, wielding a mythical sword whilst riding a dragon into a battle of the ages, or soaring between floating islands with a magical kite.As our characters are clearly such polar opposite personalities, they have to come to terms with their differences, uncover hidden secrets about themselves, and realise that to escape the simulations they find themselves trapped in, they must work together and overcome the odds through the power of friendship.During the game announcement at The Game Awards in December, Josef Fares revealed that the characters names mean a great deal to him, as Mio and Zoe are in fact named after his daughters!Now for the tricky question for you and your co-op partner: who is going to play as Mio and who will play as Zoe?The Friends PassLike A Way Out and It Takes Two, Hazelight Studios staple feature, The Friends Pass*, returns again, allowing one player who owns the game to invite a friend to play online for free! Hazelight also plans to introduce crossplay, making playing with friends even easier across any platform.Split Fiction is coming to PlayStation 5 on March 6, 2025.*Friends Pass requires installation of the Friends Pass, persistent internet connection and applicable platform account. One user must own the full game in order for the co-op player to play the full game.

On Feb. 19, Polygon is launching Switchboard, a newsletter that will deliver all the latest Nintendo Switch 2 news, reporting, and rumors directly to your inbox. Sign up here to get it weekly, and enjoy a preview of what to expect below.Of the many upgrades coming with the Nintendo Switch 2, including a bigger screen and more powerful hardware, theres one upgrade that youll hopefully never notice: the systems new Hall-effect joysticks packed into each Joy-Con. Switch 2s updated joystick technology will address a major and expensive design flaw with the original Switch, which many owners experienced in the form of stick drift.Stick drift made Joy-Con controls unreliable. Over time, Switch owners would start to experience unresponsive or inaccurate joystick movements, and ultimately Joy-Cons would need to be repaired or replaced. Stick drift was such a big problem for the original Switch that it led to Nintendo being sued multiple times and Nintendos president apologizing for defects. Nintendo wound up fixing Joy-Cons afflicted with stick drift for free.Switch 2 hopefully wont have the same problem. The system will reportedly utilize Hall-effect sticks, a technology rarely used in first-party video game console controllers largely because the alternative is so inexpensive. Not only are Hall-effect sticks more reliable over time, they can provide more precise inputs.Many traditional analog sticks, like those in modern controllers from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, use a pair of potentiometers to determine players movements left, right, up, and down. The problem with this stick technology, according to iFixit teardown engineer Shahram Mokhtari, is that a part of the potentiometer called the wiper physically contacts with a [resistive contact] material and wears it away over time.Additionally, if theres debris, or if theres any kind of humidity anything to weaken that material it accelerates that deterioration and that causes stick drift, because once the materials properties change, the voltage it sends back to the controller also changes, Mokhtari told Polygon. That change in voltage results in the controller reading inputs incorrectly.Switch controllers were particularly susceptible to drift, because debris could easily get into the controllers, wearing down a thin film meant to protect the contact material.Hall-effect sticks address the problem of drift by removing the wiper from the equation; there is no physical, mechanical contact that could degrade. In Hall-effect sticks, the wiper is replaced by a magnet, and the resistive contact strip is replaced by a flat conductor, called a Hall element, that is sensitive to magnetic fields. A sensor reads the effect of those magnetic fields on the conductor and translates them into in-game movements, without contact.A contactless joystick input method [] can drastically increase the lifetime of your controller and is far less prone to drift, iFixit data analyst Austin Blakely wrote in a wiki entry. Whereas a potentiometer joystick is nearly guaranteed to fail eventually, a Hall-Effect joystick could hypothetically last the entire lifetime of the controller.Hall-effect sensors can still experience drift, Mokhtari said, but theyre much more resistant to the issue than potentiometer-based controllers because of their contactless nature. Hall-effect sensors can also be susceptible to magnetic interference, Mokhtari added, if theyre not properly shielded from magnets which, by the way, Switch 2 Joy-Cons apparently use.So if Hall-effect sticks seem superior to their potentiometer-powered peers, why dont all controllers use them? Some of it comes down to price, Mokhtari said, as potentiometers are produced at a scale that makes them more cost effective to use. Potentiometers are a time-tested, inexpensive option. Plus, if your controller fails, as it ultimately will with use, a company like Nintendo or PlayStation would certainly be happy to sell you a new one at full retail price.But with Joy-Con stick drift being an albatross around the neck of the otherwise highly successful Switch and the Nintendo footing the cost of repairing Joy-Cons with stick drift Nintendo seems ready to move on to longer-lasting, slightly more expensive Hall-effect stick technology. Well surely be putting those new Hall-effect Joy-Cons through their paces in the coming years, as we jostle each other in the next Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros., seeing just how durable the tech really is at mass market scale.

The version of Peter Parker in Disney Plus alternate-timeline animated series Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is facing a dilemma that his previous incarnations would find familiar: Hes taking on more than any one person could probably handle, and its tearing him apart. But YFNSMs version of that conflict has built up to an unnerving point, and its unbalancing whats otherwise an enjoyable reimagining of the standard Spider-Man story, with a familiar mix of superhero adventure and high school drama.Peter is overloaded with other peoples expectations. Hes trying to excel at his ritzy new magnet high school, which has a killer robotics program and is meant to finally challenge his scientific super-brain. Hes trying to be a present, engaged friend for his new buddy Nico Minoru. Hes trying to support his Aunt May through whatever happened to his Uncle Ben. Hes trying to manage his exciting but demanding internship with Norman Osborns super-science company Oscorp. And of course, by stealing time from all his other responsibilities, hes trying to wedge in a bunch of heroing around town, following the sounds of sirens or shouting through Queens and foiling crimes in progress. Attempting to do all these things at once means he isnt doing any of them well.Stories about relationship-testing tensions between a secret hero identity and a standard civilian life date back to Marvels earliest days. Its fertile ground for angst and frustration for superheroes who want to save people and make the world better, but find that means sacrificing their personal relationships and private lives. And its no surprise to see a hero setting the bar for themselves impossibly high.But in YFNSM, its extra tough, because the show codes Peter less like the usual teen prodigy of the live-action movies, and more like a kid being burdened with a ridiculous level of adult responsibilities. At the same time, hes getting so little support from the adults in his life who should know better. Someone needs to just tell Spider-Man to stop multitasking.I mean yes, I get the point of this plot arc. The feeling of being pulled in a dozen different directions at every moment has become a major societal bugaboo with the rise of always-online culture, with constant studies saying that people are addicted to multitasking for efficiency, but that it puts additional stress on our brains while actually damaging our accuracy, memory, and commitment to any given task. Peters deep-seated sense of responsibility (With great power, etc.) is part of what makes him a hero, but it also gives him a super-sense of guilt and a belief that he has to do everything at once, and do it perfectly.His feelings of being overwhelmed by his idealism and the endless opportunities in front of him are relatable its even admirable that he tries to take on so much. But Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Mans writers throw in a weird swerve in episode 8, Tangled Web, where Peter breaks down weeping in Mays arms. He confesses that hes terrified hes letting people down. I feel like theres so much that I have to do, and so many people that I have to do right by, he says, tears running down his face. And if I cant handle that responsibility, then Im weak.May doesnt know hes a secret superhero, or that he nearly just got killed by a much older, meaner, more ruthless villain. But even thinking that hes just running himself ragged over school, his internship, and keeping up with his friends, she still gives him the worst advice possible: Youre stronger than you give yourself credit for.In essence, shes telling him he can handle all these conflicts, in spite of his clear exhaustion, and on top of the family traumas she already knows hes processing. What she isnt doing is helping him strategize or prioritize, or reminding him that a 15-year-old shouldnt feel guilty about not being able to hold down what seems to be a full-time corporate R&D job on top of a demanding school regimen.The way Norman coldly pushes Peter past his limits, regardless of the damage done, makes sense Norman Osborn is clearly selfish, ruthless, and using Peter as a tool in his vendettas. Hes edging closer to overt villany with each episode, gradually becoming the Green Goblin we know him to be in other universes.But May isnt meant to come across as a villain, or as the type of incompetent, out-of-touch adult thats so common in stories aimed at kids or young adults. Her effectively telling Peter to just continue handling all his conflicts on his own (and then pivoting to talking about herself, so he pivots to comforting her!) is a horrible character beat, and a weird miss for a narrative thats already over the top in terms of what it dumps on this kids head. Framing his entirely real and excessive burdens as a problem hes creating by just not trusting how strong he is is entirely the wrong message here. Ironically, its somewhat in keeping with older Spider-Man stories where Aunt May is just one of the many burdens adding to Spider-Mans emotional load. But the way she fails him in this animated series doesnt seem to be intentional and thematic so much as just off base.Being Spider-Man is always going to involve a certain amount of multitasking, and a certain amount of choosing between the hero and civilian personas. But there have to be some kind of reasonable limits if this show isnt meant to just be about the way the world kicks Peters ass, and the way he has to handle that more or less entirely on his own.Many previous iterations of Peter Parker have certainly felt that sense of loneliness and isolation, but theres no sense that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is meant to be that kind of angst-fest. If anything, its mined comedy out of Peters awkwardness and his lame excuses as he sneaks into class mid-lecture, or wiggles out of work to respond to a criminal crisis. But theres nothing funny about a kid breaking down crying in his guardians arms because hes overtaxed and miserable, while being told the answer is just to keep on doing everything hes doing, but be less sad about it.

With the Caucasus Mountains the tallest in Europe soaring in the distance, Kakheti unfolds as one of the best and oldest wine growing regions in the world. At its core is the all-encompassing Lopota Lake Resort. Unfolding from the historic Chteau Beura the seat of the long-run eponymously named vineyard the destination encompasses 311 guest rooms spread across 16 lakeside structures deftly imagined by Georgian architecture firm Design Avenue Studio.With a keen understanding of context, the Tbilisi-based practice developed these buildings as well as a hill-side spa, waterpark, various pools, dining options, fitness facilities, and most recently, a new jazz club. The meticulous introduction of natural materials and proportions helps the entire 148-acre campus blend into its surroundings. Most of the reinforced concrete construction dedicated to the accommodations is clad in pinewood and encircled with verdant greenery that will grow to conceal the structures with time. Inside, wood paneled walls blend seamlessly into linear oak flooring. Sea green furnishings and accessories are accented by similarly toned bathroom tiles and balanced by sheer white surfaces. The finishing touch are the custom-designed naturalistic wallcoverings developed by interior design practice ID Vision. Most of the guest rooms have private balconies that look over the lake and the rest of the activities-rich resort.The comprehensive suite of on-site facilities also includes a slavic bathhouse, horse stables, tennis courts, and a boathouse for sailing and kayaking. The four incorporated restaurants include one serving reimagined local fare and another that pairs dishes with the near-ancient wines grown here. While the Oval restaurant has an international menu, IKE is an Asian fusion haunt. Also perched on the hillside, the Forest Spa specializes in treatments derived from different cultural influences. Other than the slavic bathhouse, theres a hammam, saunas, and even wine-infused services. The fitness center facilitates conventional training, cycling, and hiking. The overall aim at Lopota Lake Resort is to provide guests with the chance to engage with nature and a healthy lifestyle. The dramatic setting is the icing on the cake.If that wasnt enough, a new jazz club and corresponding bar opened its doors in fall 2024. The curvilinear-canopy cultural center carries through the same architectural vocabulary as the other buildings but to an even more striking effect. Though situated in a pastoral context, the slatted facade structure is intended to feel like the long-established botes of say London, New York, or Paris. The temple-like exterior, with illuminated freestanding timber columns demarcating an entrance courtyard, gives way to the more intimately scaled and outfitted interior replete with a stage, individualized tables, booths, expansive bar, mezzanine level, and a distinctive grid-pattern light sculpture embedded into the curved wall of the double-height space.Able to host 150 guests for a wide range of performances, the beacon-eque jazz venue is rendered in a moody dark brown, mustard orange, and deep blue palette. The finishes and furnishings were sourced from luxury European manufacturers including heritage textile brand Pierre Frey, dynamic Danish company Ferm Living, and long established Italian producer Pedrali. Design Avenue Studio collaborated with world leading Finnish company Akukon on the acoustic optimisation of the pavilion.As Lopota is a resort catering to many different guests, we envisioned creating a space where adults could unwind until late all while preserving tranquillity throughout the rest of the resort, said Ana Maisuradze, owner of Lopota Lake Resort & Spa. In the new jazz club guests can listen to music with a signature cocktail or a glass of Chateau Beuras wine in hand, and sample a few dishes from the late dining menu.What: Lopota Lake ResortWhere: Napareuli, GeorgiaHow much: Rooms starting at $160 for a family room and $300 for a suiteDesign draws: Sophisticatedly-designed, wood-clad lodgings set along an expansive lake at the foot of the towering Caucasus Mountains; comprehensive amenities now include a state-of-the-art jazz club set within bucolic farmland and rolling hills.Book it: Lopota Lake ResortGo virtually on vacation withmore design destinations right here.Photography courtesy of Lopota Lake Resort.

There's no shortage of ways to jot down ideas these days. Your phone comes with a notes app out of the box, and its app store is full of alternatives if you're looking for any number of features or advantages.But, often, the best way to keep track of thoughts, photos, or anything else, is by texting yourself. If you don't normally text yourself, this might sound a bit odd. Why would you text yourself? I'll get into that soon. But first, let's discuss the latest app to do self-messaging right: Google Messages.Text yourself with RCS using Google MessagesAs reported by Android Authority, Google Messages' latest beta now offers users the option to text themselves via RCS. According to Redditor seeareeff, the feature is also running in the stable version of the app. Google Messages already lets you text yourself, but only through SMS. That might not sound like a big change, but it is. SMS is inferior to RCS in almost every waywhich you might expect from a messaging protocol invented in 1992.By opening this feature up to RCS, Google Messages now lets you send yourself longer messages, as well as high-quality photos and videos. SMS made it impossible to quickly preserve media with Google Messages, since it would compress images and videos (especially videos). Lifting those limitations means Google Messages users can enjoy a perk that other users have been enjoying on other platforms for years.The biggest downside, however, is that RCS messages to yourself still aren't encryptedat least, according to Android Authority. That's usually a big perk of RCS over SMS, and why security experts recommend messaging using the former rather than the latter. That lack of encryption isn't a huge deal, especially if you're using the service to reference innocuous thoughts and media, but it's good to keep in mind. You probably shouldn't text yourself anything particularly private or sensitive over Google Messages. How to text yourself with RCS in Google MessagesIf the feature is already live on your end, you won't have to do anything differently. Just text yourself! You should see the message come through as RCS, rather than SMS. If not, however, you may need to sign up for the Google Messages beta to try this out early. You can go to the Google Messages Play Store page, tap Become a tester, then follow the on-screen instructions to enroll in the beta.Why text yourself?Google Messages joins a collection of apps that makes it easy to message yourself with good results. That includes iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Facebook Messengerreally, any messaging platform that allows for unlimited messages with high quality media. For many, the best part about texting yourself is simply the convenience. You probably spend a significant portion of the time on your phone within one of these messaging apps, which means it's easy to switch from one conversation to your own private chat with yourself. If someone brings something up in one of your conversations you want to save for later, you can quickly text it to yourself. It's also a great way to sync messages and media across devices. If you have access to the messaging app on your phone, tablet, or even computer, you can access these thoughts and items from any of your devices. All of those individual messages are timestamped too, so you know exactly when each was sent. That's something I wish Apple's Notes app would do: While you can see when a note was both created and last edited, you can't see a history of what was added when. If you text yourself, you can see exactly when each and every message was generated.The lack of end-to-end encryption really is a bummer, though. If you like the idea of texting yourself, but want to make sure your notes and media are protected, you might want to think about using an encrypted platform, like Signal, for the task. Using such a platform, you could send a picture of your social security card to yourselfas long as no one has physical access to your device, you'll be safe.

Like many people, I had a retail job in college. What it failed to deliver in financial rewards, it made up for by teaching me life skills. I learned how to stay calm when someone was being loud and wrong, how to negotiate, and how to manage my time. Other learned skills weren't as obvious. For instance, I didn't realize, whenever I worked a closing shift, that I was learning to manage my own home. At least, that's what CleanTok influencers would have me believe with this latest cleaning trend. It's called "closing shift cleaning" and you may have seen it on TikTok or Reels. What is "closing shift cleaning"? Closing shift cleaning is what it sounds like, as long as you know what a closing shift is all about: You tidy up at night and get everything ready for the openers. In this case, you're not only the closer, but the opener. If you ever had to work a "clopen" shift, you might recall that you put more effort into closing to make opening up easier for yourself in the morning. This is like that, but for your home.If you've ever closed up a cafe, you know you need to make sure the food is prepped for the next morning. If you've ever closed up a mall store, you know you need to make sure the displays are in order. You need to count the cash in the till, throw out the trash, and turn off all the machines. The idea is to get all that done so the opener can focus on the actual opening tasks, like getting the muffins in the oven or coordinating a drop-off with the restock agent. When you do a "closing shift" at home, you're thinking about what you'll need the next morning and getting it ready. If you know you'll need coffee, make sure the machine is clean and you have a fresh mug available. If you have to go to the office, make sure your clothes are steamed and laid out. Take out the trash, put away any clutter that accumulated during the day, and generally get your home ready to "open" in the morning. Why does closing shift cleaning work?Thinking of your home as a business isn't a new concept in the decluttering space. In the past, I've recommended a technique that involves storing extra products in a "backstock" area, like you would in a store. Treating your home as a business allows you to be more methodical and objective, and removes a much of the hesitation or decision paralysis. As is true in any business, you want to start your day off with no bumps or missteps; you want everything to go according to plan. Preparing the night before by tidying up your kitchen, assembling everything you'll need in the morning, and "closing down" the house gives you a head start on the day. Not only does it make the next day better before it even begins, but it gives you a sense of accomplishment as you head to bed. To make this work, spend a few days taking note of what holds you up in the morning, whether it's digging your rain boots out from the back of the hall closet or tripping over the folded clothes you haven't yet put away. What, if eliminated or dealt with, would make your morning better? Take note, too, of what weighs on you when you go to sleep, like dishes left in the sink or trash you didn't take out. Then, commit to addressing these concerns at night, building a personal checklist of "closing" responsibilities.

Amazon is holding an event on February 26 at 10AM ET, and that's unusually early in the year for the company, which typically has its launches in the fall like the rest of its peers. However, considering the last time Amazon had a "devices and services" showcase was in September 2023, this one is overdue. (Yes, there was a Kindle launch in October last year, but that doesn't really count.) While we dont exactly know what the company plans on showing off, we certainly have some educated guesses. Lets get into it.First of all, the company's hardware chief, Panos Panay, and his devices and services team will be on hand. This indicates the presence of new gadgets at the event. However, the main focus will likely be more information on the long-promised next-gen Alexa.Invites are out! Seems like the smarter and 'remarkable' version of Amazons Alexa is finally launching on Feb 26th. Can't wait to try it out. @alexadevs @AlexaGames @alexa99https://t.co/oQhwGjtySx#AmazingAlexa #RemarkableAlexa #SmarterAlexa #NewAlexa #AlexaLaunchFeb26th pic.twitter.com/eQWv3rE8MY Voice Games (@voicegames) February 6, 2025 How do we know this? Amazon sent out five versions of a bare-bones invite to the event. Internet sleuths pieced the images together and, lo and behold, the background spells out the word Alexa.The AI-infused refresh has faced several delays since first being announced back in 2023. We reported that the team was having trouble getting the updated chatbot to do basic things, like creating a timer and turning on smart lights. These kinds of tasks have been the bread and butter of the current Alexa chatbot for years. The development team has also reportedly had issues with hallucinations.The company claims the new LLM-powered Alexa will be able to process nuance and ambiguitymuch like a person wouldand intelligently take action." Amazon says that itll be able to complete complex requests, like Alexa, every weeknight at 9PM, make an announcement that its bedtime for the kids, dim the lights upstairs, turn on the porch light and switch on the fan in the bedroom. That sounds useful, if it works.That brand-new Alexa would likely benefit from some dedicated hardware, thus the inclusion of Panay and his team. Its been a while since weve gotten updates to the Echo line of smart speakers, so a refresh of some kind is more than likely. Its also possible the budget-friendly and useful Echo Buds earbuds will get an upgrade.What shouldnt we expect? Well, Amazon just introduced some new Kindles at the tail-end of last year. Itd be weird to see an e-reader at this event. Also, while its possible the company could introduce new Fire tablets and the like, that doesnt really gel with the whole Alexa theme.Update, February 13 2025, 12:05PM ET: This story has been updated to add context in the intro on when Amazon last held a "devices and services" event.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/amazon-is-holding-a-devices-event-on-february-26-heres-what-to-expect-193513762.html?src=rss

Major publishers, including Politico and Vox, and their parent companies are suing the AI startup Cohere for copyright and trademark infringement, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is another salvo in the ongoing war between the people that make stuff and the AI algorithms that mimic the stuff that people make.The various publishers, which also include The Atlantic and The Guardian, have accused Cohere of improperly using more than 4,000 copyrighted works to train its large language model. Additionally, the startup has been accused of passing off large segments of entire articles to its users without proper attribution.Rather than create their own content, theyre stealing ours to compete with us without our permission, without compensation, and undermining our very business that feeds their machines in the first place, said Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News Media Alliance, which organized the lawsuit on behalf of its members. Thats theft.The suit also says the company has engaged in trademark infringement, suggesting that the algorithm would send articles to users with proper attribution, using the publishers name, but the article itself would be filled with hallucinated and incorrect information. One example given in the suit involves a piece that The Guardian published about Hamass attack on the Nova music festival in Israel, only the AI conflated the terror attack with a 2020 shooting in Nova Scotia, Canada.Members of the News Media Alliance are suing the AI company Cohere, accusing it of stealing their journalism without permission to train its generative AI model. The CEOs of Politico and Business Insider just sent memos to staff announcing the lawsuit. pic.twitter.com/ZyLASydeM7 Max Tani (@maxwelltani) February 13, 2025 The publishers are seeking the maximum amount of damages under the Copyright Act, which is $150,000 per work infringed. The suit also wants to reduce the access that Cohere has to copyrighted works. They also hope to set a legal precedent to establish the terms of the playing field for licensed use of journalism for AI, including for training and also real-time uses, according to Pam Wasserstein, president of Vox Media. Vox publishes stuff like The Verge, New York Magazine and Polygon.Cohere sent Engadget a statement on the matter, saying that it "stands by its practices for responsibly training its enterprise AI. We have long prioritized controls that mitigate the risk of IP infringement and respect the rights of holders." The company said it believes the "lawsuit is misguided and frivolous, and expect this matter to be resolved in our favor.Cohere is currently valued at $5 billion. The company creates software that developers can use to build AI applications for business use. It also operates a chatbot for general users. It has received backing from venture-capital firms like Index Ventures and companies like NVIDIA and Salesforce.Of course, this is just the latest legal action taken against an AI company on behalf of a publisher. The New York Times sued OpenAI in 2023 for copyright infringement and News Corp brands, including The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, sued Perplexity back in October. The New York Times has also had beef with Perplexity. Just this week, a judge ruled in favor of Reuters in a suit against the AI company Ross Intelligence.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/major-publishers-sue-ai-startup-cohere-over-copyright-infringement-165352238.html?src=rss

Waze's new smart, one-click button makes navigating to regular destinations faster.