You can now test your racing skills against Sony AI’s GT Sophy – the one already wiping the floor with folks who get paid to play this professionally – when it arrives in today’s update for Gran Turismo 7 on the PlayStation 5 today. Players will face off against four GT Sophy AI opponents, all with vehicles specced slightly differently. There will be a four-circuit series separated by difficulty, too. The GT Sophy races will only be available until the end of March.
Meanwhile, an amateur Go player beat a highly-ranked AI system after exploiting a weakness discovered by a second computer. By exploiting the flaw, American player Kellin Pelrine defeated the KataGo system decisively, winning 14 of 15 games without further computer help.
It’s a rare Go win for humans since AlphaGo’s milestone 2016 victory. FAR AI developed a program to probe KataGo for weaknesses. The trick was to create a large “loop” of stones to encircle an opponent’s group, then distract the computer by making moves in other areas of the board. Even when its group was nearly surrounded, the computer failed to notice. Now we just need to figure out how to use this strategy on the Gran Turismo circuit…
– Mat Smith
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OnePlus has teased a version of its latest phone, the OnePlus 11 Concept, with… lots of LED lights. The “flowing back” has a unibody glass design with a meandering stream-type LED lighting pattern with a ring around the camera module. (Yes, it does remind us a little of the Nothing Phone 1’s transparent, light-up back.) It will be revealed on February 27th at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023 in Barcelona.
The Fellow Opus is a coffee grinder that doubles as a showpiece
Consistency and versatility in an attractive package.
Fellow has a proven track record for well-designed, sturdy coffee gear. The company makes everything from travel mugs to kettles, including a grinder primarily designed to prepare beans for pour-over. Fellow’s second grinder is more versatile, used to prep beans for nine-bar espresso in addition to pour-over, French press, cold brew and much more. It’s consistent, easy to use and, well, stylish.
Google Chrome’s memory and battery saver modes are rolling out to everyone
The features first emerged in December.
Google Chrome has increasingly become a resource hog over the years, vacuuming up more and more of your system’s memory and battery life with reckless abandon. Now, Google is doing something about it. As part of Chrome 110 for Windows, Mac and Chromebook desktops, the company is rolling out memory- and energy-saver modes. The features, which Google announced in December, are now enabled by default. You can turn them off in the Performance section of Chrome settings. Memory Saver puts inactive tabs on ice to free up RAM for other pages and apps. When you click on a frozen tab, you’ll be able to continue from where you left off.