Grand Theft Auto VI(ce City)
Florida Man is real, and he lives inside the GTA VI trailer. Or rather, the idea of Florida Man lives inside the GTA VI trailer. Oh yeah, the first trailer for GTA VI is officially out – a little earlier than expected, but here nonetheless. Rockstar Games had planned the first real look at the series’ next big thing to go live at 9AM ET (or 4PM for South Africans) before scrapping the idea and releasing the whole thing a few hours early. If you want someone to thank, direct your blessings to the now-suspended X.com account that leaked the trailer just hours before its release.
We’re guessing you’ve already seen the trailer. You’re not special. It’s already garnered 46 million views in the eight hours since it went live, and we expect it to have plenty more before the close of business. And rightfully so. Tom Petty’s rendition of Love is a Long Road sets the tone perfectly for a modern Grand Theft Auto title set in Florida Vice City filled to the brim with over-the-top caricatures, beautiful visuals, a Bonnie and Clyde-ish story, and a release window.
2025. For a game that’s more hyped than the return of a certain religious figure, a two-year wait doesn’t seem so bad. Our only concern is for those people who’ll be taking to Vice City’s streets on their PC, with a Take2 press release confirming GTA VI will be next-gen only, and will continue that frustrating trend of skipping PC at launch. There’s no word on just how far behind that port will be, but we’re guessing it’ll take at least a year — similar to that of the Red Dead Redemption PC port.
We won’t pretend Google’s Instrument Playground doesn’t scare us just a bit
Another day, another artificial intelligence story, huh? This one, at the very least, has an interesting angle. Google’s gone and created Instrument Playground – a program that’ll develop twenty seconds of brand-new music from just a few words. That might sound familiar to Meta’s MusicGen efforts, but Google, as ever, is looking to one-up its competitors by adding a couple of twists.
For one, the search giant is claiming the Instrument Playground is capable of producing more than 100 instruments on the fly — before having MusicLM turn it into something palatable. Its next derivation is Playground’s ability to add a descriptor, something like ‘moody’, ‘happy’, or ‘romantic’, to whichever instrument you’ve picked, and have it spit out twenty seconds of that to work with.
Once it’s got an instrument and adjective, Google AI can finally get to work. Five seconds later, you’ve got a twenty-second-long piece of music to work with, complete with a keyboard that’ll help you perfect your masterpiece. It’s not very advanced, but it’ll get the job done with three modes – Ambient, Beat, and Pitch – to create more effects. There’s even a sequencer to bring four instruments together.
Of course, we had to give the live demo a whirl. And you can, too.
PlayStation accounts are dropping like flies
If you’re a PlayStation user, your account might be banned. That’s the story we’re hearing from The Verge anyway, which is reporting several users who have been banned from their PlayStation Network (PSN) accounts for seemingly no reason. Sony has yet to even acknowledge the claims and could be further away from an actual fix.
Just a brief scroll through the r/playstation subreddit is enough to tell you this is a real problem affecting users. What should be a time of celebration after the GTA VI trailer, is instead filled with people reporting the same message: “This account is permanently suspended from the PlayStation network due to violations of the PlayStation Network Terms of Service and User Agreement.”
There don’t appear to be any qualifiers for what could get your account banned at the moment, with accounts being pulled at random. Our account hasn’t been affected (yet), as we were able to log into the PS mobile app without any issues. Some members of the PlayStation subreddit have noted the return of their accounts a couple of hours after contacting PlayStation Support. If that’s you, we’d recommend doing just that.
Ingenuity is back, baby
After a month-long sabbatical, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter — currently flying around the surface of Mars — is back and finally communicating with the space agency again. Whew. Ingenuity and Earth ceased communications after the giant ball of hydrogen and helium (AKA the Sun) came between the two and drove a wedge into the relationship. That’s what’s known as a solar conjunction and shouldn’t happen again for at least another couple of years.
Now back in touch, Ingenuity managed to fly for 393 metres, reached heights of 12 metres, and capped out at a top speed of 19km/h. That all happened in the space of two minutes before Ingenuity touched down, completing its 67th flight. According to NASA’s tweet, ingenuity managed to reposition itself for future flights that will eventually help its engineers scout safer paths for Mars’ other inhabitants; the Curiosity, Perseverance, and Tianwen-1.
While Ingenuity’s goals are mainly to provide the engineers back on Earth with imagery of Mars’ surface (it was originally built as a tech demo) it has become a key player in NASA’s exploration of the planet, convincing the agency to get working on far more advanced aircraft to replace the copter when it eventually conks out forever.