A hot potato: The prospect of humanoid robots building more humanoid robots sounds like something from science fiction, but an Austin-based company has just signed a deal that could eventually lead to this scenario. It's inevitably caused more fears about human jobs being lost, but the company behind the machines says it will leave employees more time for "creative, thought-intensive projects." Robot-maker Apptronik has announced a pilot partnership with American firm Jabil. In addition to its supply chain services primarily serving OEMs, Jabil is involved in designing, engineering, and manufacturing electronic circuit boards and systems.Jabil said that it has several customers who are developing robots and warehouse automation. The new deal will see it provide a factory environment that will offer real-world validation testing of Apptronik Apollo robots, ahead of scaling the robot for manufacturing. The 5-foot 8-inch, 160-pound robots have a 4-hour-per-battery-pack runtime and a 55-pound payload.The pilot program will see the robots carry out an array of simple, repetitive tasks such as inspection, sorting, kitting, lineside delivery, fixture placement, and sub-assembly.Jabil also said it has agreed to begin producing the Apollo robots in its factories, meaning that should the pilot program work out, these robots will eventually be put to work building more of themselves.The idea of AI-powered robots working tirelessly to create more robots sounds concerning. Apptronik told TechCrunch this is still a ways off, though it is targeting 2026 to begin manufacturing commercial units. // Related StoriesBefore we start to worry about robots building more robots, there's the pressing issue of how this type of increased automation will impact human jobs.The makers of automation/AI systems regularly claim that their products will help workers rather than replace them, with the machines carrying out more repetitive and monotonous tasks so humans can concentrate on other work.Apptronik followed the same line, stating that its robots will give people more time for projects that the machines cannot do. The announcement says those whose tasks have been taken by the Apollo robots could spend more time on "creative, thought-intensive projects" like writing resumes, probably.This is the second major pilot deal entered into by Apptronik. It signed an agreement with Mercedes-Benz in March 2024 that saw Apollo put to work on certain tasks on the automaker's production lines.In January last year, BMW announced that humanoid robots would begin working at its vehicle manufacturing plants, starting in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The 5-foot 6-inch, 130-pound robots, made by Californian Robotics startup Figure, were successfully tested at the facility in June, when they inserted sheet metal parts that were assembled as part of the chassis.

ABCTable of ContentsTable of Contents2001: Gosford Park2002: Chicago (the right choice)2003: Lost in Translation2004: Sideways2005: Brokeback Mountain2006: The Departed (the right choice)2007: There Will Be Blood2008: Milk2009: Inglourious Basterds2010: The Social Network2011: Moneyball2012: Lincoln2013: Her2014: The Grand Budapest Hotel2015: Mad Max: Fury Road2016: La La Land2017: Phantom Thread2018: Roma2019: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood2020: Sound of Metal2021: Licorice Pizza2022: The Banshees of Inisherin2023: Maestro2024: AnoraFirst, a confession for the last four years, I havent watched the Oscars telecast. (I learned about the whole Will Smith situation the next morning, if you were wondering, and I cared about it just as much as I would have the previous night, which is to say not at all.) Why have I skipped out on this ostensibly unifying American cultural moment for a whole presidential cycle? Because practically nothing inspires more gall in me than an Academy Awards show.For decades, Academy voters, swayed by craven awards season campaigns and driven to serve their own studios interests above those of posterity and the public, have continually given the wrong awards to the wrong people, rewarding mediocrity and leaving artistry going begging.Recommended VideosNeed proof? Here are the films that should have won the last 24 Academy Awards for Best Picture, out of the available nominees, and the one that should win it this year not that Im holding my breath. And because the nominees are often (read: usually) themselves wrong, Ive included one egregiously un-nominated film from each year.Related2001: Gosford ParkRobert Altmans sophisticated murder mystery, with all the trappings of an Agatha Christie novel but a surprisingly acute class consciousness, is airily, elegantly shot by cinematographer Andrew Dunn and features an erudite script by Julian Fellowes, whose subsequent hit Downtown Abbey lacks Gosford Parks edge. Its miles better than Ron Howards one-dimensional A Beautiful Mind, which won the big prize that year.Egregious snub: The Royal Tenenbaums2002: Chicago (the right choice)This one is a photo finish. Against stiff and worthy competition from Scorseses Gangs of New York and Polanskis The Pianist, Chicago narrowly earns its Best Picture crown with the benefit of hindsight. (Its a better watch than the Polanski film and cleaner than the Scorsese.) The screen adaptations of stage musicals that work the same way and as well as their source material can be counted on one hand, and Rob Marshalls film is one. Jumping into an inky black theatrical void for its musical numbers and returning to an ably production-designed 1920s for its book scenes, Marshall happened on a down-and-dirty, hip style that hes been foolish enough to try to vainly recreate in the four execrable movie musicals hes made since.Egregious snub: Secretary2003: Lost in Translation Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray give performances so perfectly calibrated that Sofia Coppolas worshipful camerawork can only stand back and admire the view. The decision to award the prize to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that year can only be viewed as a product of its time its impossible to imagine the prestige-conscious Academy honoring a big-budget franchise entry this way today. In any case, I confess I never bought into Peter Jacksons muddy, melodramatic pyrotechnics-over-substance. Give me Coppolas keen attention to human behavior any day.Egregious snub: School of Rock2004: Sideways A weak year gave us Clint Eastwoods dour Million Dollar Baby as the featherweight champ, but Alexander Paynes Sideways wins this one in a TKO. Paynes adaptation of Rex Picketts novel about a bachelor weekend in wine country cyclically repeats gorgeously poetic images in a way that even a strong piece of written fiction cant do, which is part of the reason to adapt existing material in the first place. Paul Giamatti, as an aspiring novelist with particular feelings about merlot, is so superb you can feel yourself osmosing his high blood pressure through the screen.Egregious snub: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind2005: Brokeback Mountain Was there even a need to include this entry? Paul Haggiss anthology drama Crash (much better than its cracked up to be but still pretty preachy) incited a firestorm when it defeated Ang Lees tender gay romance Brokeback Mountain. 20 years later, most Hollywood wags still consider this year one of the two prototypical examples of Oscar wrong-headedness (more of the other one later), and its hard to argue.Egregious snub: The Squid and the Whale2006: The Departed (the right choice) The last time to date Best Picture got it right, and a tremendously satisfying instance of Hollywood karma paying off. Martin Scorseses razor-sharp remake of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs was the first and as yet only time a Scorsese film has won Best Picture. (Marty picked up his first and so far only Best Director award that year, too.)Egregious snub: Casino Royale2007: There Will Be Blood Ill give it to the Academy this one was nearly impossible. As between the Coen Brothers masterpiece No Country for Old Men, which took home the prize, and Paul Thomas Andersons brutal derricking of the American psyche, There Will Be Blood, its basically a coin flip. (And that leaves out the equally fantastic if more popcorn-y Michael Clayton, also nominated. Why dont we get movie years like this anymore?) But for me, Andersons film, audaciously and tightly controlled and featuring in Daniel Day-Lewiss Daniel Plainview one of the best performances ever committed to celluloid, is (marginally) the better of the two.Egregious snub: The Darjeeling Limited2008: MilkGroundswell ProductionsA weak year, won by Danny BoylesSlumdog Millionaire I find his attention-disorder editing style off-putting as a rule. Gus van Sants stark telling of the shocking real-life story of politician and gay icon Harvey Milk was more moving and all the more relevant in a year when California banned same-sex marriage. What happened to Milk was outrageous, and the film enlists its audience in that righteous anger.Egregious snub: In Bruges2009: Inglourious BasterdsThe Weinstein Company2009 was the year of the Academys biggest mistake in the modern era the expansion from five nominees for Best Picture to ten, a desperate attempt to respond to popular backlash to The Dark Knight being snubbed in 2008. The result was a splintered series of partisan voting blocs (roughly aligning with the various Hollywood guilds) whose beneficence was increasingly random, beginning with 2009s victory for the self-aggrandizingly gritty war drama The Hurt Locker over the years frontrunner, the pedestrian Avatar. But it was Quentin Tarantinos genre-smashing World War II revenge fantasy, Inglourious Basterds, with its script like a great novel and its star-making performance by Christoph Waltz, that deserved the prize.Egregious snub: Fantastic Mr. Fox2010: The Social NetworkIn competitive Oscar years, its a good bet to put your money on the British period drama. (See Chariots of Fire, Oliver!, A Man for All Seasons, My Fair Lady, Tom Jones, Lawrence of Arabia I could go on.) Sure enough, the able and engaging but awkwardly directed The Kings Speech managed a neck-and-neck triumph over The Social Network, an unprecedented collaboration between auteurs Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher and one of the best films of the 21st century. Go figure.Egregious snub: Beginners2011: MoneyballColumbia PicturesNow we get into a highly competitive stretch. In a wildly illustrious year of extravagantly accomplished films like The Descendants, Hugo, and Midnight in Paris, Moneyball was quiet, handled with care, class, and attention to detail by director Bennett Miller (who has made three narrative features and been nominated for Best Director twice). The Artist, which won that year, was nice enough but rode the coattails of its awards-season narrative as the first silent film to win Best Picture since 1927.Egregious snub: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo2012: Lincoln Django Unchained would be just as deserving a winner here, but Lincoln is the kind of towering historical drama that only Spielberg can make (its closest parallel is his Amistad, also in part about an American President). It also helps that it features the aforementioned Day-Lewis in his final Oscar-winning role (he won three and should have at least six). Argo won that year as a sop to Ben Affleck, who was seen as having been snubbed for Best Director.Egregious snub: Moonrise Kingdom2013: HerSteve McQueen is a rigorous filmmaker whose work runs the gamut from the earth-shatteringly brilliant (2011s Shame) to the insipid (2024s Blitz). His 12 Years a Slave, which won in 2013, is, like all movies that are honest about slavery, a real trial to watch, so brutal, in fact, that its quality becomes sort of a secondary concern. Personally, I preferred Spike Jonzes exquisitely personal Her, a delicate allegory about artificial intelligence that is in fact a way of dealing with his divorce from Sofia Coppola, a period she herself mined for Lost in Translation.Egregious snub: Drinking Buddies2014: The Grand Budapest Hotel As my egregious snubs from 2001, 2007, 2009 and 2012 might suggest, Im personally of the opinion that Wes Anderson is one of the greatest working directors, even if he has been on a self-indulgent downward spiral since he made The Grand Budapest Hotel, his first and so far only film to be nominated for Best Picture. With all the idiosyncrasies of his smaller character dramas but the scale of a historical epic, Budapest is thoroughgoing joy. The same cant be said for Birdman, this years winner, which is technically accomplished and entertaining in its way but small-minded and coarse in its kneejerk cruelty to its characters.Less-than-usually-egregious snub: Nightcrawler2015: Mad Max: Fury RoadVillage Roadshow PicturesHow far weve come and/or fallen. In 2003, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King carried its sweep of the technical awards forward into the nights big prize. In 2015, another (but self-evidently superior) franchise entry, Mad Max: Fury Road, won six Oscars but fell short of Best Picture, losing to the eminently worthy but far from life-changing Spotlight. In the decade since, George Millers adrenaline-shot-as-cinematic-experience has come to be understood as one of the best of the century. But then the Academy never had any ability to predict staying power. Everyone and their mother thinks Vertigo is the best or second-best movie ever made. It got a grand total of two nominations Art Direction and Sound.Egregious snub: Carol2016: La La LandPlease, please, please, no angry letters: I loved La La Land. I still love La La Land. Sue me.Egregious snub: 20th Century Women2017: Phantom ThreadDunkirk, Get Out or Three Billboards? I wouldve been quite pleased. Lady Bird or Call Me by Your Name? I would have understood. But The Shape of Water? Guillermo del Toros tortured monster movies have always been more interesting curiosities than real achievements to me. As compared to Paul Thomas Andersons masterful Phantom Thread, a twisted romance which created a fresh paradigm for on-screen lovers, Shape of Water is a cold fish. But that outrage doesnt compare to giving the Oscar to Gary Oldman in the abominable Darkest Hour for wearing makeup, when they could have given it to Day-Lewis for his surpassing performance in this, his final film before his retirement.Egregious snub: The Death of Stalin2018: Roma The irrelevance of the Academy for the under-30 generation is generally understood to begin with the awarding of the 2018 Best Picture award to Green Book, a film one could easily imagine airing on TNT on a Sunday afternoon in 2004, but less so going home with three Oscars. There are all sorts of reasons why Green Book won, but the primary one is that the most deserving film of 2018 and Green Books primary competition was released by Netflix. In 2018, the streamers takeover of Hollywood was still widely resented, so much the worse for Alfonso Cuarns lyrical and gorgeous autobiographical story of 1970s Mexico City.Egregious snub: First Reformed2019: Once Upon a Time in HollywoodColumbia PicturesBong Joon-hos Parasite is sophisticated and deserving, but it didnt have the joy, the catharsis, or the crackling dialogue of Quentin Tarantinos latest. Its harder to appreciate now what a Fourth-of-July sparkler of pleasant surprise was the films conclusion when it was first released. A shaggy-dog hangout movie, when done right, can outclass the most tightly plotted thriller.Egregious snub: Portrait of a Lady on Fire2020: Sound of MetalCaviarThere is very little in the array of nominees for the Oscar in 2020 about which to be genuinely passionate. Im willing to accept that the pandemic was partially to blame, but I can think of at least four 2020 films off the top of my head more deserving than the eight nominated (see one of them below).Theres some truly bottom-of-the-barrel stuff here, like Finchers self-indulgent Mank and Emerald Fennells spectacularly overrated Promising Young Woman, and some that youre guaranteed to watch once and never think of again, like the eventual winner, Nomadland. Of the options available, Darius Marders intense and ultimately heartrending Sound of Metal takes the cake if only for the killer central performance of Riz Ahmed, who had the rare distinction of out-acting Anthony Hopkins in The Father, though of course the latter won Best Actor.Egregious snub: Kajillionaire2021: Licorice Pizza Perhaps youve gotten the sense (see 2007 and 2017) that Wes is not the only Hollywood Anderson I revere. Paul Thomas Andersons Licorice Pizza, an atmospheric period piece roughly based on the childhood of producer Gary Goetzman, is a superb, overwhelming, extraordinarily romantic movie by a cinematic genius working at the top of his game. CODA, this years winner, is fine.Egregious snub: The Worst Person in the World2022: The Banshees of InisherinClose call here between this and Spielbergs The Fabelmans, a totally unexpected journey out of his wheelhouse. But Banshees, aside from being one of the more perceptive films about male friendship, is a triumph of tone, while the winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once, is just what its title implies often to its detriment. I liked it okay, but to me it felt like a marvelously well-put-together student film. I much preferred Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinerts previous film Swiss Army Man, which knocked me out when I saw it at Sundance in 2016.Less-than-usually-egregious snub: The Good Nurse2023: MaestroLea PicturesI have an instinctive suspicion of anyone who dismisses movies they see as Oscar bait. What does that mean, exactly message films, or films that offer meaty opportunities for big-swing actors? Sign me up for both. In any case, what is Oppenheimer, this years winner, but Oscar bait? The difference between Oppenheimer and a movie like Maestro, which Im willing to concede wont be everyones cup of tea, is that Maestro applies an artful lens of romanticism to its story appropriate for its central character content dictating form while Oppenheimer is choked nearly to death by the oppressive and inescapable presence of Christopher Nolan. He seems like a nice guy, but I dont particularly want him breathing down my neck for three hours.Egregious snub: Sanctuary2024: AnoraFilmNationAnora is the most likeable and dynamic Oscar frontrunner in years, and its win of the Producers Guild of America award for Best Picture, predictor of the Oscar in six of the last seven cycles, bodes well. To see Sean Baker, who was making films on $3000 budgets while many of his competitors in this category were commanding studio war chests, holding this award might reduce the agita Im otherwise sure to get from this years Academy Awards. Mind you, I said might.Egregious snub: Between the TemplesEditors Recommendations

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The returns diminished Its a lemonOpenAIs largest AI model ever arrives to mixed reviews GPT-4.5 offers marginal gains in capability and poor coding performance despite 30x the cost. Benj Edwards Feb 28, 2025 11:35 am | 4 Credit: Rawpixel via Getty Images Credit: Rawpixel via Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe verdict is in: OpenAI's newest and most capable traditional AI model, GPT-4.5, is big, expensive, and slow, providing marginally better performance than GPT-4o at 30x the cost for input and 15x the cost for output. The new model seems to prove that longstanding rumors of diminishing returns in training unsupervised-learning LLMs were correct and that the so-called "scaling laws" cited by many for years have possibly met their natural end.An AI expert who requested anonymity told Ars Technica, "GPT-4.5 is a lemon!" when comparing its reported performance to its dramatically increased price, while frequent OpenAI critic Gary Marcus called the release a "nothing burger" in a blog post (though to be fair, Marcus also seems to think most of what OpenAI does is overrated).Former OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy wrote on X that GPT-4.5 is better than GPT-4obut in ways that are subtle and difficult to express. "Everything is a little bit better and it's awesome," he wrote, "but also not exactly in ways that are trivial to point to."OpenAI is well aware of these limitations, and it took steps to soften the potential letdown by framing the launch as a relatively low-key "Research Preview" for ChatGPT Pro users and spelling out the model's limitations in a GPT-4.5 release post published Thursday."GPT4.5 is a very large and compute-intensive model, making it more expensive than and not a replacement for GPT4o," the company wrote. "Because of this, were evaluating whether to continue serving it in the API long-term as we balance supporting current capabilities with building future models."According to OpenAI's own benchmark results, GPT-4.5 scored significantly lower than OpenAI's simulated reasoning models (o1 and o3) on tests like AIME math competitions and GPQA science assessments, with GPT-4.5 scoring just 36.7 percent on AIME compared to o3-mini's 87.3 percent. Additionally, GPT-4.5 costs five times more than o1 and over 68 times more than o3-mini for input processing.And GPT-4.5 is terrible for coding, relatively speaking, with an October 2023 knowledge cutoff that may leave out knowledge about updates to development frameworks. A graph of "Performance vs. Cost" assembled by X user Enrico using data from Paul Gauthier. Credit: Enrico - big-AGI / X Tech investor Paul Gauthier performed independent testing of GPT-4.5's coding ability using Aider's Polyglot Coding benchmark and found that GPT-4.5 ranked 10th in overall ability (Claude 3.7 Sonnet with extended thinking is on top, and o1 and o3 ahead), and it also ranked poorly in performance versus cost, meaning that for coding tasks, GPT-4.5 isn't worth the price you'd have to pay through the API.According to OpenAI's benchmarks, GPT-4.5 does show some improvements over GPT-4o in specific areas. The model scored higher on the multilingual MMMLU (general knowledge) test with 85.1 percent compared to GPT-4o's 81.5 percent, suggesting better performance on knowledge-based tasks across multiple languages. OpenAI also reports that GPT-4.5 demonstrated improved performance in reducing confabulations (hallucinations), with the company claiming it generates fewer false or misleading responses than previous versions.OpenAI's testing also indicated that human evaluators preferred GPT-4.5's responses over GPT-4o in about 57 percent of interactions, suggesting modest but measurable improvements in overall user experience. However, these incremental gains come with significantly higher computational demands and costs.High on vibes, low on reasoningUpon 4.5's release, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman did some expectation tempering on X, writing that the model is strong on vibes but low on analytical strength. "It is the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person to me," he wrote. He then added further down in his post, "a heads up: this isn't a reasoning model and won't crush benchmarks. it's a different kind of intelligence and there's a magic to it i haven't felt before."GPT-4.5 is so massive and inefficient that Altman also wrote on X that the company would have liked to release GPT-4.5 for everyone but that the company is "out of GPUs." More are on the way, he said.Perhaps because of the disappointing results, Altman had previously written that GPT-4.5 will be the last of OpenAI's traditional AI models, with GPT-5 planned to be a dynamic combination of "non-reasoning" LLMs and simulated reasoning models like o3.A stratospheric price and a tech dead-endAnd about that priceit's a doozy. GPT-4.5 costs $75 per million input tokens and $150 per million output tokens through the API, compared to GPT-4o's $2.50 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. (Tokens are chunks of data used by AI models for processing). For developers using OpenAI models, this pricing makes GPT-4.5 impractical for many applications where GPT-4o already performs adequately.By contrast, OpenAI's flagship reasoning model, o1 pro, costs $15 per million input tokens and $60 per million output tokenssignificantly less than GPT-4.5 despite offering specialized simulated reasoning capabilities. Even more striking, the o3-mini model costs just $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens, making it cheaper than even GPT-4o while providing much stronger performance on specific tasks.OpenAI has likely known about diminishing returns in training LLMs for some time. As a result, the company spent most of last year working on simulated reasoning models like o1 and o3, which use a different inference-time (runtime) approach to improving performance instead of throwing ever-larger amounts of training data at GPT-style AI models. OpenAI's self-reported benchmark results for the SimpleQA test, which measures confabulation rate. Credit: OpenAI While this seems like bad news for OpenAI in the short term, competition is thriving in the AI market. Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet has demonstrated vastly better performance than GPT-4.5, with a reportedly more efficient architecture. It's worth noting that Claude 3.7 Sonnet is likely a system of AI models working together behind the scenes, although Anthropic has not provided details about its architecture.For now, it seems that GPT-4.5 may be the last of its kinda technological dead-end for an unsupervised learning approach that has paved the way for new architectures in AI models, such as o3's inference-time reasoning and perhaps even something more novel, like diffusion-based models. Only time will tell how things end up.GPT-4.5 is now available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers, with rollout to Plus and Team subscribers planned for next week, followed by Enterprise and Education customers the week after. Developers can access it through OpenAI's various APIs on paid tiers, though the company is uncertain about its long-term availability.Benj EdwardsSenior AI ReporterBenj EdwardsSenior AI Reporter Benj Edwards is Ars Technica's Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site's dedicated AI beat in 2022. He's also a tech historian with almost two decades of experience. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC. 4 Comments

why? Yes, it turns out you can make a Tesla Cybertruck even uglier Mansory, infamous modifier of cars, turns its attention to the Tesla Cybertruck. Jonathan M. Gitlin Feb 28, 2025 11:21 am | 30 Just imagine what kind of podcasts the driver of this Cybertruck listens to. Credit: Mansory Just imagine what kind of podcasts the driver of this Cybertruck listens to. Credit: Mansory Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThere's a saying about putting lipstick on a pig, but what if it's not lipstick? That's the question the universe set out to answer when it aligned in such a way that famed (or perhaps infamous) car customizer Mansory got itself a Tesla Cybertruck. The Mansory Elongationa name that must have taken ages to think ofoffers exterior, interior, and wheel and tire upgrades for the straight-edged stainless steel-wrapped pickup.Among those who mod cars, there are tuners, who focus on adding power and (one hopes) performance, and then there are the customizers, who concentrate more on aesthetics. Once upon a time, the entire luxury car industry worked like thata client would buy a rolling chassis from Bugatti, Rolls-Royce, or Talbot and then have bodywork added by coachbuilders like Gurney Nutting, Touring, or Figoni et Falaschi. At least the rear winglets don't entirely compromise access to the bed. Credit: Mansory Modern homologation requirements have mostly put an end to that level of coachbuilding, but for the ultra-wealthy prepared to spend telephone numbers on cars, brands like Rolls-Royce will still occasionally oblige. More common now are those aftermarket shops that spiff up already luxurious cars, changing normal doors for gullwing versions, adding flaring fenders and bulging wheel arches, and plastering the interior in any hue of leather one might imagine.Mansory has been on the scene since the end of the 1980s and has made a name for itself festooning Rolls-Royces, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and even Bugattis with extra bits that their original designers surely did not want added. Now it's the Tesla Cybertruck's turn.One almost feels sorry for the original. Almostthe Cybertruck somehow manages to look worse in real life than in pictures; the confluence of angles where its various steel body panels fit together somehow serves to prove the exception to the rule that is the golden ratio. I'd never call it elegant, but if it ever had any elegance, Mansory made sure that's all gone with the Elongation.Mansory's press release says that the front and rear bumpers and "extravagant" fender flares bear the classic signature of its designers. The additions are whatever the opposite of subtle is; the front lip extension reminds me of the track-focused Porsche 911 GT3 I drove last month, and I'm staring at the three triangular protuberances on the wheel arch extension and wondering if they really could be there to control vortices or just look nice. Functional aero or nah? Mansory Functional aero or nah? Mansory This interior reminds me fondly of a pair of sneakers I like. Mansory This interior reminds me fondly of a pair of sneakers I like. Mansory The forged carbon fiber does look nice, though. Mansory The forged carbon fiber does look nice, though. Mansory This interior reminds me fondly of a pair of sneakers I like. Mansory The forged carbon fiber does look nice, though. Mansory At 26 inches, the new wheels probably don't help range that much, although the carbon fiber add-ons all over the body surely do worse in that regard. Mansory's specs list energy consumption at 2.4 miles/kWh (26.1 kWh/100 km). The interior is up to the customeryou get to decide what gets paint, what gets carbon fiber, and what gets leather (and in which eye-searing shades).You'd have to contact Mansory to find out how much all of this would cost, should you have a Cybertruck you think needs taking down a peg or two.Jonathan M. GitlinAutomotive EditorJonathan M. GitlinAutomotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 30 Comments

A piece of Apple memorabilia auctioned for tens of thousands of dollars.A colorful bow tie worn by late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs sold for $35,750.He wore it when he debuted the company's Macintosh computer at an annual shareholder meeting in 1984.When it came to fashion, Steve Jobs was perhaps best known for hissignature black turtlenecks. But he wore a more obscure and much more colorful bow tie to unveil a monumental product in the company's history.The pink-and-green striped bow tie belonging to the late Apple cofounder just sold for $35,750 to the highest bidder after Julien's Auctions concluded an auctioncalled "Spotlight: History and Technology" on Thursday. Jobs' bow tie fetched $35,750 at auction. Julien's Auctions Jobs wore it at an annual shareholder meeting in 1984, where he introduced the Macintosh computer. It had 27 bids, according to the item listing and was only estimated to sell for $1,000 to $2,000.He also wore the bow tie on a few other occasions, including two photo shoots surrounding the computer's release. Jobs also wore the bow tie in photo shoots for the Macintosh. Julien's Auctions A year prior, Jobs had also worn the tie while speaking at the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado, where he joked, "They paid me sixty dollars, so I wore a tie."Other relics from Steve Jobs-era Apple have hit the auction block before, including a turtleneck of his, as well as his old business cards.Products from Apple's early days have also been auctioned. In 2022, for example, an unopened first-generation iPhone from 2007, still in its original box, sold for more than $39,000 to the highest bidder. A year later, another unopened first-gen iPhone auctioned for a whopping $190,000.Besides Jobs' bowtie, Julien's Auctions also listed other items in its auction, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's old Facebook hoodie, which went for $15,875, and a photo of a SpaceX rocket launch signed by CEO Elon Musk, which sold for $10,400.

Altman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and he was a computer whiz from a young age.Sam Altman is a Missouri native. f11photo/Shutterstock He learned how to program and take apart a Macintosh computer when he was 8 years old, according to The New Yorker. He attended John Burroughs School, a private, non-sectarian college-preparatory school in St. Louis.He told The New Yorker that having a Mac helped him with his sexuality. Altman came out to his parents when he was 16.Altman has been open about his sexuality since he was a teenager. Matt Weinberger/Business Insider "Growing up gay in the Midwest in the two-thousands was not the most awesome thing," he told The New Yorker. "And finding AOL chat rooms was transformative. Secrets are bad when you're eleven or twelve."Altman came out as gay to the whole community after a Christian group boycotted an assembly at his school that was about sexuality."What Sam did changed the school," his college counselor, Madelyn Gray, told The New Yorker. "It felt like someone had opened up a great big box full of all kinds of kids and let them out into the world."Altman studied computer science at Stanford University for two years before he and two of his classmates dropped out to work full time on their mobile app.Like many famous tech founders, Altman is a college dropout. turtix/Shutterstock The app shared a user's location with their friends. Loopt was part of the first group of eight companies at startup accelerator Y Combinator. Each startup got $6,000 per founder, and Loopt was in the same batch as Reddit, according to The Business of Business.Loopt eventually reached a $175 million valuation, but it didn't garner enough interest, so the founders sold it for $43 million in 2012.Altman has been a tech founder since his early 20s. Drew Angerer/Getty The $43 million sale price was close to how much it had raised from investors, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company was acquired by Green Dot, a banking company known for prepaid cards.One of Loopt's cofounders, Nick Sivo, and Altman dated for nine years, but they broke up after they sold the company.After Loopt, Altman founded a venture fund called Hydrazine Capital, and raised $21 million.Peter Thiel has backed multiple companies founded by Altman. Marco Bello/Getty Images That included a large part of the $5 million he got from Loopt, and an investment from billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Altman invested 75% of that moneyinto YC companies, and led Reddit's Series B fundraising round.He told The New Yorker, "you want to invest in messy, somewhat broken companies. You can treat the warts on top, and because of the warts the company will be hugely underpriced."In 2014, at the age of 28, Altman was chosen by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham to succeed him as president of the startup accelerator.Altman was a teacher and a major player in the startup world in 2014. Drew Angerer/Getty Images While he was YC president, Altman taught a lecture series at Stanford called "How to Start a Startup," in the fall of 2014. The next year, Altman was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for venture capital at 29 years old.After he became YC president, he wanted to let more science and engineering startups into each batch.Altman at the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Idaho in 2016. Drew Angerer/Getty He chose a fission and a fusion startup for YC because he wanted to start a nuclear-energy company of his own. He invested his own money in both companies and served on their boards.Mark Andreessen, cofounder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, said to The New Yorker, "Under Sam, the level of YC's ambition has gone up 10x."He finds interesting and expensive ways to spend his free time.The Koenigsegg Regera is a rare Swedish sports car that can cost nearly $5 million. Martyn Lucy/Getty Images In April (the same month he made Forbes' billionaire list,) Altman was spotted in Napa, California driving an ultra-rare Swedish supercar. The Koenigsegg Regera is seriously fast, able to go from zero to 250 miles per hour in less than 30 seconds. There are only 80 of these cars known to exist, and they can cost up to $4.65 million.He once told two YC founders that he likes racing cars and had five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla, according to The New Yorker. He's said he likes racing cars and renting planes to fly all over California.Separately, he told the founders of the startup Shypmate that "I prep for survival," and warned of either a "lethal synthetic virus," AI attacking humans, or nuclear war."I try not to think about it too much," Altman told the founders in 2016. "But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to."Altman's mom is a dermatologist and told The New Yorker, "Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He'll call and say he has a headacheand he'll have Googled it, so there's some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn't have meningitis or lymphoma, that it's just stress."Altman has a brother, Jack, who is a cofounder and CEO at Lattice, an employee management platform.Julia and Jack Altman live in the Mission District of San Francisco. San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images/Contributor Along with their brother Max, the Altmans launched a fund in 2020 called Apollo that is focused on funding "moonshot" companies. They're startups that are financially risky but could potentially pay off with a breakthrough development.In 2015, Altman cofounded OpenAI with Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX at the time.Elon Musk and Sam Altman speak onstage in San Francisco. Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity Fair Their goal for the non-profit artificial intelligence company was to make sure AI doesn't wipe out humans."We discussed what is the best thing we can do to ensure the future is good?" Musk told The New York Times in 2015. "We could sit on the sidelines or we can encourage regulatory oversight, or we could participate with the right structure with people who care deeply about developing A.I. in a way that is safe and is beneficial to humanity."Some of Silicon Valley's most prominent names pledged $1 billion to OpenAI along with Altman and Musk, including Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, and Thiel.Altman stepped down as YC president in March 2019 to focus on OpenAI. He stayed in a chairman role at the accelerator.Altman went all-in on OpenAI in 2019. @sama At a StrictlyVC event in 2019, Altman was asked how OpenAI planned to make a profit, and he said the "honest answer is we have no idea."Altman said OpenAI had "never made any revenue" and that it had "no current plans to make revenue.""We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue," he said at the time, according to TechCrunch.Altman became CEO of OpenAI in May 2019 after it turned away from being a nonprofit company into a "capped profit" corporation.OpenAI changed from nonprofit status in 2019. Skye Gould/Business Insider "We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance," OpenAI said on its blog. "Our solution is to create OpenAI LP as a hybrid of a for-profit and nonprofit which we are calling a 'capped-profit' company."OpenAI received a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019.Altman in 2014 in New York City. Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch Altman flew to Seattle to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, where he demonstrated OpenAI's AI models for him, WSJ reported. The pair announced their business partnership on LinkedIn.Current and former insiders at OpenAI told Fortune that after Altman took over as CEO, and after the investment from Microsoft, the company started focusing more on developing natural language processing.The company shifted its focus after Altman took over. Brian Ach/Getty Altman and OpenAI's former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, said the move to focus on large language models was the best way for the company to reach artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a system that has broad human-level cognitive abilities.In 2021, Altman and cofounders Alex Blania and Max Novendstern launched a global cryptocurrency project called Worldcoin.Worldcoin founders Alex Blania and Sam Altman. Marc Olivier Le Blanc/Worldcoin It wanted to give everyone in the world access to crypto by scanning their iris with an orb. The company was started in 2020, but stopped operating in a few countries in 2022 due to logistics issues, Bloomberg reported. In January, Worldcoin tweeted that it had reached 1 million people and has onboarded over 150,000 first-time crypto users.Under Altman's tenure as CEO, OpenAI released popular generative AI tools to the public, including DALL-E and ChatGPT.A screenshot of a Dall-E webpage. OpenAI Both DALL-E and ChatGPT are known as "generative" AI, meaning the bot creates its own artwork and text based on information it is fed.After ChatGPT was released on November 30, Altman tweeted that it had reached over 1 million users in five days.ChatGPT was made public so OpenAI could use feedback from users to improve the bot.ChatGPT's success was nearly instant. Getty Images A few days after its launch, Altman said that it "is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness." Altman postedthat ChatGPT was "great" for "fun creative inspiration," but "not such a good idea" to look up facts.ChatGPT recently began testing a paid version of ChatGPT called "ChatGPT Professional" that is supposed to give better access to the bot. In December, Altman posted that OpenAI "will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering."In January 2023, Microsoft again announced it was making a "multibillion dollar" investment into OpenAI.OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft further solidified its success. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Although specifics of the investment were not shared, it is believed it is worth $10 billion. Before Microsoft's investment, other venture capitalists wanted to buy shares from OpenAI employees in a tender offer that valued the company at around $29 billion.Altman is still interested in nuclear fusion and invested $375 million in Helion Energy in 2022.Altman said he's "super excited" about Helion's future. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images "Helion is more than an investment to me," Altman told TechCrunch. "It's the other thing beside OpenAI that I spend a lot of time on. I'm just super excited about what's going to happen there."He told TechCrunch that he's "happy there's a fusion race," to build a low-cost fusion energy system that can eventually power the Earth.Last year, OpenAI launched its pilot subscription plan for ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 a month.Users can pay for more features on ChatGPT. FLORENCE LO/Reuters People who pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus get benefits such as access to the site even when traffic is high, faster responses from the bot, and first access to new features and ChatGPT improvements.The subscription is only available for people in the US, and OpenAI said it will soon start inviting people on the waitlist to join.Altman wrote that OpenAI's mission is to make sure AGI "benefits all of humanity.Artificial general intelligence is a big talking point for Altman. JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images "If AGI is successfully created, this technology could help us elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge that changes the limits of possibility," Altman wrote on OpenAI's blog.Despite its potential, Altman said artificial general intelligence comes with "serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents, and societal disruption." But instead of stopping its development, Altman said "society and the developers of AGI have to figure out how to get it right."Altman went on to share the principles that OpenAI "care about most," including "the benefits of, access to, and governance of AGI to be widely and fairly shared."Altman said he and OpenAI are "a little bit scared" of AI's potential as it continues to develop.GPT-4 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4) is a multimodal large language model from Open AI, a predecessor to GPT-4o. Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images In an interview with ABC News, Altman said he thinks "people should be happy that we're a little bit scared" of generative AI systems as they develop.Altman said he doesn't think AI systems should only be developed in a lab."You've got to get these products out into the world and make contact with reality, make our mistakes while the stakes are low," he said.

Fortnite is making big changes to its ban policies, and while it's giving some penalised players a second chance, it's not all good news for battle royale sinners here's whyTech16:20, 28 Feb 2025Cheaters are going to see some big changes in FortniteFortnite Chapter 6 Chapter 2 is here, with the popular Battle Royale's new 'Lawless' update bringing plenty of fun for players as they work to complete a fresh new Battle Pass.While we recently reported on a Fortnite player that was essentially 'tarred and feathered' by having to pay prize money to charity and release an awkward apology video, Epic has softened its stance on first-time cheaters in a new update.If you were expecting to get away with it, though, be sure to read the small print here's why.Lawless brings Sub Zero and another Pickle to the Fortnite Universe(Image: Epic Games)Epic Games released a new blog post this week detailing updates to its crusade against cheaters. The post confirms that Epic has filed a new lawsuit against an account thief that was selling those he acquired, while another lawsuit was announced recently.Cronus, a device used to cheat in Fortnite (and other games, including Rocket League), will no longer offer Fortnite and Rocket League gamepacks.What's perhaps most interesting, however, is the section titled 'Offering a Second Chance'."While maintaining game integrity is our top priority, we also believe in allowing second chances for players who made a bad decision and have learned from it," Epic explains."Starting in April, well be moving to a one-year matchmaking ban for first-time cheating offenses, allowing former cheaters to learn from their mistakes while still punishing and deterring cheating. A second offense will result in a lifetime ban.""This means for the duration of their first ban, players will be able to log in and text/voice chat with other players, but wont be able to matchmake into Epic- or creator-made experiences, or spectate other players."To clarify, this update means that if you've been banned for cheating in Fortnite, you're allowed to log into the game and that's about it. It's the equivalent of the teacher keeping you in at lunchtime while your friends get to play on the playground.The new one-year ban applies to all Creator modes, tooYou can chat to your friends via text and voice chat, but you won't be able to play Fortnite, or even spectate your buddies or others, for an entire year."As part of rolling out this policy, existing lifetime cheating bans that have been in effect for more than a year will be lifted," the post adds.Article continues belowEpic giveth, and Epic taketh away, it seems, but it'll be interesting to see if this causes an influx of rehabilitated players, or if they've all moved on.This kind of update is in contrast with Call of Duty. Activision's RICOCHET team has been playing 'whack-a-mole' with cheaters for years, but they keep creating new accounts and getting right back to it.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.

A chilly bargain (Dragnek)A quirky indie game has introduced a new pricing strategy, where the game is cheaper the colder it is outside.The modern gaming landscape is rife with different pricing structures to accommodate different types of games, between high-end blockbusters, smaller independent titles, and free-to-play experiences riddled with microtransactions.But no other game has a system quite like Good Snowman Is Hard To Build a 2015 puzzle game which is now being sold at a different price every hour in accordance with Londons turbulent weather. So its dynamic pricing, Michael Fish style.The game, which is usually priced at $14.99 (12.79), currently costs $9.90 (around 7.85) to match the 9.9C in London, according to forecast website OpenWeather. Thats 34% off for tolerating another freezing day.This is all to celebrate the games 10th anniversary and broadly ties in with the theme, where you build snowmen in increasingly elaborate ways.There are some caveats to the weather-based bargaining though. This deal is only available through itch.io (which is why everything is priced in US dollars), so you cant buy it at a cheaper price on Steam, mobile, or Nintendo Switch when the sun goes down.If you went full galaxy brain and thought you might be able to get paid when the temperature sinks below zero, the team has thought about that scenario as well. Ha ha, nice try, a note reads. The game will be free.More TrendingThat does mean if you wait for the winter months to roll around again, you will be able to download A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build for free, or at least at a very cheap price. Its unclear, however, how long this deal will last for.A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is developed by Draknek & Friends, who previously created A Monsters Expedition. The teams next game is The Electrifying Incident: A Monster Mini-Expedition, which hopefully wont be dictated by UK energy prices.Remarkably, this isnt the first time weather has impacted a game. Game Boy Advance title Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand released in 2004 and produced by none other than Hideo Kojima had a light sensor which required players to charge their weapons through sunlight.Unfortunately, it was designed with Japanese weather in mind and was rendered effectively unplayable in the UK as you could never seem to get enough sunlight to play it properly. Electrifying Incident: A Monster Mini-Expedition is slated for April 2025 (Dragnek)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy