Kalakshar US

Tesla’s plan to open up Superchargers is now extending to Canada after the government revealed that the company will open access to some of its existing Supercharger network to other brands’ EVs. The effort starts later this year with a pilot route between the capital city of Ottawa and Sudbury. There will be 750 opened stations by the end of 2025, and “at least” 350 of those will be speedy 250kW Superchargers. That performance is important given the focus on long-distance travel — the open charger route will include a very large Trans-Canada Highway stretch between Ottawa and Calgary.

The announcement comes alongside a plan to make EV chargers more accessible in the country. The government is teaming up with partners to help install nearly 3,000 EV chargers in multi-use residential buildings, offices, public places and fleets. Most of them (1,908) will be modest Level 2 chargers, but this will include 100 Level 3 chargers. Funding is going toward five ongoing projects installing as many as 1,328 EV chargers.

The Canadian news comes just as Tesla promised Ford EV drivers access to 12,000 North American Superchargers starting in spring 2024. Ford is also switching to Tesla’s open-source charge port standard with 2025 model year cars. This is in addition to previous efforts to open Superchargers in the US and Europe. While this isn’t ubiquitous coverage, it could be reassuring if you want a non-Tesla EV but are worried about inconsistent charger quality.

Canada isn’t a major EV hub like the US or China, but it’s taking steps to make itself an industry cornerstone. Volkswagen will build its first North American EV battery plant in southern Ontario. A deal for a Stellantis EV battery plant is on shaky ground, but could be influential if it goes through. Add the country’s existing car manufacturing base and it may play an important role going forward. Not that the nation has much choice — if it’s going to ban sales of combustion engine passenger cars by 2035, it needs to foster demand for EVs well in advance.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tesla-will-open-its-supercharger-network-to-other-evs-in-canada-150057481.html?src=rss 

WhatsApp’s newest update takes a page out of work-centric video call platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The messaging app is in the process of rolling out a screen sharing feature that will record and display the contents of your screen with whoever is on the other end of the video call, WABetaInfo reports.

An icon of a phone with an arrow pointing out of it represents the feature and sits alongside longstanding tools like switching cameras, muting and disabling video that appear at the bottom of WhatsApp calls. Once you click the new button, a prompt appears asking if you want to “Start recording or casting with WhatsApp?” alongside a disclaimer that the company will have access to any passwords, photos or payment details you display. If you’re okay with that, all that’s left is to click “Start now.” You can then stop sharing your screen at any time during the call.

Screen sharing is only available to select Android beta testers right now but should roll out to more users in the coming weeks. However, it might not work on older Android models, bigger group calls or with people who don’t have WhatsApp’s latest version downloaded. If you have an iPhone or iPad and don’t feel tied to WhatsApp, Apple baked a similar screen sharing feature into FaceTime calls in January.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/whatsapp-test-brings-screen-sharing-to-android-phones-135041152.html?src=rss 

NVIDIA has unveiled technology called Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) that would allow gamers to speak naturally to non-playable characters (NPCs) and receive appropriate responses. The company revealed the tech during its generative AI keynote at Computex 2023, showing a demo called Kairos with a playable character speaking to an NPC named Jin in a dystopic-looking Ramen shop. 

The demo (below in 32:9, the widest widescreen I’ve ever seen) shows the player carrying on a conversation with Jin. “Hey Jin, how are you,” the person asks. “Unfortunately, not so good,” replies Jin. “How come?” ” I am worried about the crime around here. It’s gotten bad lately. My ramen shop got caught in the crossfire.” 

Yes, the dialogue is a tad wooden; it seems like ChatGPT might have done a better job. Still, the idea is to show that you could just speak into your headset and an NPC will answer in the proper context, making for a more natural interaction than you’d usually get in such a situation. 

NVIDIA made the demo in partnership with Convai to promote ACE, which can run both in the cloud and locally (on NVIDIA hardware, natch). It uses NVIDIA NeMo for building, customizing and deploying large language models that can be customized with lore and character backstories, while using guardrails to protect against inappropriate conversations. It also deploys a speech recognition and speech-to-text tool called Riva, along with NVIDIA’s Omniverse Audio2Face “for instantly creating expressive facial animation of a game character to match any speech track.”

The demo was built in Unreal Engine 5 to show off NVIDIA’s ray-tracing and other GPU features. The visuals are actually more compelling than the AI dialogue, though it’s easy to see how the latter could be improved enormously. NVIDIA didn’t announce any games that will use the tech, but Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl and Fort Solis will employ Omniverse Audio2Face. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nvidias-generative-ai-lets-gamers-converse-with-npcs-124552730.html?src=rss 

If you’re in the market for a quality controller without breaking the bank, now might be a good opportunity. Microsoft’s Xbox Elite Series 2 Controller in black is 19 percent off, dropping from $180 to $145. Though it’s not the lowest we’ve seen, it’s still a decent-sized drop from its retail price. 

The Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 is a solid option for Xbox gamers, regardless of your system of choice, as it’s compatible with Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows 10 or 11 devices through Xbox Wireless or Bluetooth. There’s also an option to connect it with an included USB-C cord. You can swap parts like D-pads and paddles, save up to three unique profiles to the controller and explore button mapping options through the Xbox Accessories app. It also holds up to 40 hours of battery life.

Microsoft’s Xbox Wireless Headset is also on sale, down from $100 to $85 — a 15 percent discount. The headphones are compatible across the same systems as Xbox’s wireless controller, such as Xbox Series X|S. Additional features include auto-mute, voice isolation and up to 15 hours of battery life. The headphones have sound technologies like Dolby Atmos and Windows Sonic, with volume control dials located on the left earcup.

The wireless headset is still a good $40 more than its wired counterpart, but if free movement is important to you, the discount certainly helps. If you’re looking to update all your accessories for the summer, the sale brings the total price of the wireless headset and controller to $230 — saving you $50 overall.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-xbox-elite-series-2-controller-is-35-off-right-now-114033199.html?src=rss 

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket designed to take astronauts to the moon is over budget and far behind it’s original schedule, according to a scathing new audit from NASA’s Inspector General. Furthermore, the report foresees “additional cost and schedule increases” that could potentially jeopardize the entire Artemis mission if problems aren’t handled. 

NASA’s spending on the Artemis Moon Program is expected to reach $93 billion by 2025, including $23.8 billion already spent on the SLS system through 2022. That sum represents “$6 billion in cost increases and over six years in schedule delays above NASA’s original projections,” the report states. 

The SLS, which finally launched for the first time in November 2022, uses four RS-25 engines per launch, including 16 salvaged from retired Space Shuttles. Once those run out (all engines on SLS are expendable), NASA will switch to RS-25E engines being built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, which are supposed to be 30 percent cheaper and 11 percent more powerful. It also uses solid rocket boosters provided by Northrop Grumman. 

The older technology isn’t helping with the budget as NASA expected, though. “These increases are caused by interrelated issues such as assumptions that the use of heritage technologies from the Space Shuttle and Constellation Programs were expected to result in significant cost and schedule savings compared to developing new systems for the SLS,” the audit states. “However, the complexity of developing, updating, and integrating new systems along with heritage components proved to be much greater than anticipated.” 

For instance, only 5 of the 16 engine adaptations have been completed, and scope and cost increases have hit the booster contract as well. The latter has been the biggest issue, increasing from $2.5 billion to $4.4 billion since Artemis was announced, and delaying the schedule by five years. 

The Inspector General also blames the use of “cost-plus” contracts that allow suppliers to inflate budgets more easily, instead of fixed-priced contracts. The report recommends that upcoming work be shifted to a fixed-price regime and that procurement issues be resolved, among others. NASA management has agreed to all eight recommendations. 

The Artemis moon mission project was based on the Constellation program, originally launched in 2005 with the goal of returning to the moon by 2020 and eventually, Mars. Cancellation of that project by the Obama administration was met with widespread criticism, largely because the program guaranteed jobs around the US. 

However, the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, introduced the same year, mandated construction of the SLS and requiring the repurposing of existing technology, contracts and workforce from Constellation. It also required partnerships with private space companies. SpaceX, for one, is developing its own Starship rocket system, also capable of carrying astronauts to the Moon and Mars. However, Starship exploded on its first orbital launch mission, and may not fly again soon due to issues with the self-destruct command and the considerable damage it did to local ecosystems. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasas-sls-rocket-is-6-billion-over-budget-and-six-years-behind-schedule-091432515.html?src=rss 

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Hiang made a string of announcements during his Computex keynote, including details about the company’s next DGX supercomputer. Given where the industry is clearlyheading, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the DGX GH200 is largely about helping companies develop generative AI models.

The supercomputer uses a new NVLink Switch System to enable 256 GH200 Grace Hopper superchips to act as a single GPU (each of the chips has an Arm-based Grace CPU and an H100 Tensor Core GPU). This, according to NVIDIA, allows the DGX GH200 to deliver 1 exaflop of performance and to have 144 terabytes of shared memory. The company says that’s nearly 500 times as much memory as you’d find in a single DGX A100 system.

For comparison, the latest ranking of the Top500 supercomputers lists Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee as the only known exascale system, having reached a performance of nearly 1.2 exaflops on the Linmark benchmark. That’s over twice the peak performance of the second-placed system, Japan’s Fugaku.

In effect, NVIDIA claims to have developed a supercomputer that can stand alongside the most powerful known system on the planet (Meta is building one that it claims will be the fastest AI supercomputer in the world once it’s fully built out). NVIDIA says the architecture of the DGX GH200 offers 10 times more bandwidth than the previous generation, “delivering the power of a massive AI supercomputer with the simplicity of programming a single GPU.”

Some big names are interested in the DGX GH200. Google Cloud, Meta and Microsoft should be among the first companies to gain access to the supercomputer to test how it can handle generative AI workloads. NVIDIA says DGX GH200 supercomputers should be available by the end of 2023.

The company is also building its own supercomputer, Helios, that combines four DGX GH200 systems. NVIDIA expects Helios to be online by the end of the year.

Huang discussed other generative AI developments during his keynote, including one on the gaming front. NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for Games is a service developers will be able to tap into in order to create custom AI models for speech, conversation and animation. NVIDIA says ACE for Games can “give non-playable characters conversational skills so they can respond to questions with lifelike personalities that evolve.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nvidias-next-dgx-supercomputer-is-all-about-generative-ai-043053544.html?src=rss