Category: Technology

GM’s Cruise division doesn’t want to rely on third-party manufacturers for the chips powering its autonomous vehicles — so, it’s making its own. Based on what Carl Jenkins, the company’s VP for Hardware Engineering, told Reuters, the main motivator for the switch is the lofty costs associated with paying for other companies’ chips. 

“Two years ago, we were paying a lot of money for a GPU from a famous vendor,” Jenkins told the news organization, referring to NVIDIA. He explained that Cruise couldn’t negotiate because it wasn’t mass manufacturing autonomous vehicles just yet. Its technology is still in its experimental stages, and while it recently became the first company to secure permission to charge for driverless rides, its operations remain limited. By making its own chips, Cruise — like Tesla, Apple and Volkswagen before it — is taking its future into its own hands. 

Jenkins has revealed that Cruise had already developed four chips at this point, starting with Horta, which was designed to become the main brains of the vehicle. Dune will process data from sensors, while another chip will process information from the radar. Yet another one will be announced at a later date. These components will power the Cruise Origin, the self-driving electric shuttle the company first announced back in 2020. The Cruise Origin will have no steering wheel or pedals and will instead have four seats inside facing each other. It’s intended to be used as a shareable vehicle that’s on the road at all times, shuttling passengers to their destinations.

Company executives didn’t say how much they spent on the chips’ development, but they believe they could recoup their investment once Cruise starts scaling up production. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the company’s in-house chips would help Origin “hit that sweet spot from a cost perspective” by 2025 and that they make purchasing fully autonomous vehicles for personal use viable. It’s unclear if that means Cruise intends to sell the Origin to individuals, but GM chief Mary Barra announced at CES this year that the automaker wants to sell personal autonomous vehicles by the middle of the decade.

 

It’s been awhile since Sony teased us with the next installment in Kratos’ story. Earlier this year, a first look at God of War: Ragnarok showed us a father and son on a search for Tyr, the God of War of the Norse mythology. In the new trailer revealed during the September State of Play event, they have apparently found him, as he questions their motives, their quest and what they even know of so-called Godhood.

It’s a trailer that teases a complex story that seemingly has Kratos following his son’s lead this time around. Together, they will determine if they are bound by fate and prophecy, or make their own destiny — all while marching through a parade of stunning visuals and fast-paced combat while wielding familiar weapons like the Blades of Chaos and Leviathan Axe.

Between the story hints and action, the trailer definitely teases what looks like a worthy successor to 2018’s God of War — but if that’s not enough to convince you to pick up the game when it launches on November 9th, Sony is hoping a special limited-edition controller might do the trick. The God of War Ragnarok DualSense wireless controller is a blue and white affair decorated with a wolf and bear. The two-toned design is so subtle, you probably wouldn’t even recognize it as a God of War tie in at a glance. On the other hand, it’s not obnoxiously ugly, either.

God of War: Ragnarok, and its limited-edition gamepad, are both available on November 9th. Pre-orders for the controller open on September 27.

 

The studio behind Nioh plans to take PlayStation fans on an adventure through Bakumatsu-era Japan. On Tuesday, Team Ninja — not to be confused with Ninja Theory — announced it is working on a new action-adventure game titled Rise of the Ronin. 

Set in 1863, about a decade after Commodore Matthew Perry ended Japan’s isolation from the West, the game grounds the player in an era of dramatic technological and political change. You’ll play as a wandering Ronin navigating a fractured country. This being a Team Ninja project, expect stylish third-person melee combat. It also looks like the game will take inspiration from Western open-world games like Assassin’s Creed — which, you have to admit, is fitting given the subject matter. Rise of the Ronin will be a PlayStation console exclusive when it arrives sometime in 2024.

 

Flickr is adding a new virtual photography category to help users find and categorize images they capture in their favorite video games. Previously, the platform only offered three content categories: photos, illustration and art, and screenshots. The company notes the third and final one didn’t quite meet the needs of one of its fastest-growing communities, which is why it’s making the change.

“By putting your work into one of these categories, you can use filters to limit your search results by interest,” Flickr explains in a blog post spotted by PetaPixel. “For instance, virtual photographers will be able to filter by ‘virtual photography’ while conducting site-wide searches if they only want to see that kind of work, while avoiding real-world photography or other art and illustration.”

The addition is an acknowledgment of just how popular virtual photography has become. We’re at the point where most games either ship with a photo mode at launch or the feature is added after release. Many developers have also started to frequently share the best captures from their communities. For instance, Hideo Kojima retweets Death Stranding photo mode images almost every week, as do studios like CD Projekt Red and Guerrilla Games.

 

Patreon, a platform that helps creators to generate more income from their work, has laid off 80 employees, or around 17 percent of its total headcount, amid the global economic slowdown and fears of a recession. The company is closing its Berlin office, which housed sales and marketing employees. Patreon is centralizing those operations in the US. A Dublin office is also shutting down and Patreon will offer nine engineers there the option to relocate to the US in order to centralize resources. An office in Porto, Portugal will remain open to provide support to creators and users in Europe.

The layoffs have impacted four teams — Go-to-Market, Operations, Finance and People — CEO Jack Conte wrote in a letter to employees. Patreon will offer affected workers at least three months of severance and those in the US will receive COBRA healthcare coverage through the end of the year. The company will also offer resources to help them find a new job and waive a one-year equity vesting cliff for pending stock options.

Last week, Patreon let go five members of its security team for different reasons. Conte said this “was part of a longer-term strategy to continue distributing security responsibilities across our entire engineering team, bring new areas of expertise into Patreon internally, and continue partnering with external experts.” However, he noted that the company is ramping up its investment in security.

Conte wrote that the layoffs are part of a restructuring that will see Patreon plow more resources into its product, engineering and design departments. However, the company is scaling back recruitment and the size of its operations.

“I’m more confident than ever that the world needs a better economic system for creative people, and Patreon will keep building that system for creators over the decades ahead,” Conte said. “However, the pandemic introduced volatility to the broader trend, starting with a rapid acceleration during COVID lockdowns. In response, we built an operating plan to support this outsized growth, but as the world began recovering from the pandemic and enduring a broader economic slowdown, that plan is no longer the right path forward for Patreon.”

This is just the latest in a long line of recent layoffs at notable tech companies. Apple, Google, Meta, Peloton, Netflix, Snap, Paypal, Unity and others have all reduced their headcount or pumped the brakes on recruitment in recent months.

 

Following an Insider beta test that began in July, Discord voice chats are now available on all Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles. The integration allows Discord users on Xbox, PC and mobile to join the same voice channels. You’ll first need to link your Discord and Xbox accounts together to get started. If you already did that so that your Discord contacts could see your Gamertag, you’ll need to do so again because of the new voice permissions required to make the integration work. And then comes the complicated part.

Discord on Xbox works by transferring you and your voice chat from the platform to your console. As such, you can’t join a call directly from an Xbox. Instead, you’ll need to start your conversations on desktop or mobile and then use the Discord and Xbox apps to transfer the call. Once you’ve linked your accounts, you’ll see a new “Join on Xbox” button in Discord that allows you to begin that process. Tap the button and the Xbox app will open on your phone to ask you on what console you would like to continue your chat.

It’s not the most intuitive implementation, but it could improve over time. “We look forward to continuing our partnership to create even deeper, more meaningful experiences for your friends and communities,” Discord said of the integration. Microsoft echoed the sentiment, noting it was excited “to bring more Discord experiences to Xbox in the future.”

 

Electronic Arts is determined to keep cheaters at bay. The company has developed a kernel-level anti-cheat system for PC that it will deploy alongside FIFA 23 when the game arrives on September 30th. According to the publisher, the move was necessary to “ensure fair play” by taking on PC cheat developers who are increasingly building kernel-level exploits that OS-level anti-cheat tools are unable to detect.

In a blog post, EA’s senior director of game security and anti-cheat Elise Murphy wrote that the company created EA AntiCheat (EAAC) because “third-party anti-cheat solutions are often opaque to our teams, and prevent us from implementing additional privacy controls or customizations that provide greater accuracy and granularity for EA-specific game modes.” It should also be able to address security issues head on.

EAAC won’t be used in all EA games, though the publisher says it’s necessary for competitive titles with an online focus, such as FIFA 23. This year’s edition includes cross-play support and, in theory, EAAC should prevent console players from having to deal with PC cheaters. The company may take different anti-cheat approaches in games without leaderboards or a competitive system. As such, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see EA add EAAC to the likes of Apex Legends, but it seems unlikely to be patched in to the 2021 Game of the Year (don’t take my word for it) It Takes Two.

The tool will only be active when a game with EAAC is running on your PC. It will be uninstalled when you remove all EA games that require it (you can uninstall EAAC manually, but the likes of FIFA 23 won’t be playable). Murphy wrote that “EAAC will have negligible impact on your gameplay,” so it shouldn’t diminish performance.

As far as system privacy and security goes, Murphy says that EAAC will only examine the files it needs to for anti-cheat reasons. EAAC will hash the information that it does collect and jettison the original data. The tool won’t collect data from your browsing history, apps that don’t interact with EA games or anything else that’s irrelevant to its purposes, according to the blog post.

EA isn’t the first publisher to adopt a kernel-level anti-cheat approach. Riot and Activision use similar tools in Valorant, Call of Duty: Vanguard and Call of Duty: Warzone.

 

A majority of Twitter’s shareholders have voted to approve Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover. During a special meeting of shareholders that lasted about seven minutes, stockholders approved of two proposals: one to adopt the merger agreement with Musk, and one related to how the company’s executives will be compensated as a result of the deal.

Both measures were approved, though Twitter will disclose the final breakdown of votes “at a later date” when it files paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Though shareholders formally approved the deal, which valued each share at $54.20, an October trial in Delaware’s Court of Chancery will determine whether Musk is able to terminate the agreement. Musk initially cited concerns about bots and spam as reasons for ending the merger agreement, though Twitter’s lawyers argued he was actually concerned about “World War 3.” The judge in the case ruled that Musk will be able to add claims raised by the company’s former security chief turned whistleblower, Peiter Zatko, to his legal bid.

Separately, Zatko testified at a Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, during which he shed new light on his allegations that Twitter’s security practices are a risk to the United States’ national security.

 

Even though iOS 16 is only just in the hands of most iPhone users, Apple has already revealed some details about what’s ahead for the operating system. A feature called Clean Energy Charging, which the company will roll out in the US as part of an update later this year, will optimize charging times to take into account when the power grid is using more sustainable sources of energy. Apple says the aim is to reduce the carbon footprint of iPhones.

The feature complements the Optimizing Battery Charging option Apple introduced a few years ago to maximize battery health. With this setting enabled, your iPhone will figure out your daily charging routine and limit the battery’s charge to 80 percent until close to when you’re going to start using your iPhone (or Mac, since that has the feature too).

In addition, iCloud Shared Photo Library is coming later this year. That will create a separate iCloud library that up to six people can access. Apple will also introduce support for the Matter smart home standard once that becomes available sometime this fall.

Those with an iOS 16-compatible iPhone now have access to a boatload of new features, primarily to do with personalization. The Live Activities function should make it easier to track certain things in real time, such as the status of a delivery and sports scores. The option to edit and unsend messages in iMessage will be a big deal for many, as will the ability to copy and paste an object from one photo to another.