Babe, new Switch 2 information just dropped
It’s official. 2024 is over. The Nintendo Switch 2 has reportedly been delayed, and we won’t pretend the news didn’t leave us a little distraught. Sure, Nintendo’s got a couple of games waiting in the 2024 wings, but nothing it can confidently expect to carry the console until Q1 2025. That’s the revised release date the company is targeting, according to several outlets, including Bloomberg.
Initially, Nintendo was expected to put their new console on shelves before 2024’s end. There was even an unveiling pencilled in for March 2024. Bloomberg’s sources, saddled with “knowledge of the matter,” who preferred not to be named, believe Nintendo broke the news to its publishers that they shouldn’t expect the console until “March 2025 at the earliest.”
VGC, one of the first to report the delay, later corroborated the story with its own source, noting the same Q1 2025 release date. As for the reason behind the delay, it’s believed that Nintendo is simply looking to use the delay to bolster its line-up of first-party titles, simultaneously leaving the Switch to fend for itself in its final months. That’s what Sekan Toto, a Tokyo-based analyst had to say, anyway.
“The company will still try to keep the blockbusters for the next console, so 2024 might see more remakes of old Nintendo hits. In any case, 2024 will be a lot tougher for Nintendo without a new device.”
Hey, at least we’ve got a couple more months to find all those Korok seeds, huh?
OK Peugeot, tell me about the Roman Empire
Were an all-out AI war to break out, we’re not sure whether you’d be better off sticking with Peugeot’s latest and greatest — or putting as much distance between it and yourself as possible. We’d imagine it’d depend largely on how well you treated the artificial intelligence infecting your car. Fortunately, it’s not too late to start treating our AI overlords with some respect. Peugeot, one of Stellantis’ charges, has officially incorporated ChatGPT into its i-Cockpit system.
When Peugeot says it’s “one of the first car manufacturers to integrate ChatGPT artificial intelligence as a service to its customers,” it technically isn’t lying. It is “one of the first,” but it isn’t the first. Mercedes-Benz won that race a while back. There’s nothing wrong with second place, though.
Before ChatGPT’s grand entrance in 2022, cars were, for lack of a better word, dumb. Most still are. Even those that can make the odd phone call when you ask nicely, but it won’t get more advanced than that. Now, Peugeot is aiming to turn the driving experience into a more fluid, intuitive and interactive one. Pre-empt your requests with a simple “OK Peugeot” and it’ll “spring into action,” performing tasks like answering questions or… hooking your kids up with a quiz that’ll keep them entertained on long trips. We bet it’s good at other stuff too.
Peugeot has limited the AI used here to ChatGPT version 3.5 and even got SoundHound’s Chat AI platform (we bet you forgot about that one) involved for the ride. That means it’s limited to data up until January 2022, so don’t worry if it doesn’t get your joke about the Will Smith incident. You can see a full list of the cars getting hold of the upgrade here.
Martians wanted
Ever wanted to uproot your life and live in a Mars-like facility for up to a year? Yeah, we didn’t think so. That isn’t stopping NASA from asking people with a STEM background to do exactly that, in an attempt to “help inform the agency’s plans for human exploration on the Red Planet.”
The mission, officially dubbed CHAPEA 2 (the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) will begin in 2025, and needs four (hopefully) willing participants to experience the Red Planet (on Earth) for a year in NASA’s 3D-printed 157-square-metre habitat where the conditions are about as harsh as you’d expect. Entrants will be paid, but NASA isn’t disclosing how much to just any old looky-loo.
Fortunately, the entry requirements aren’t particularly strenuous. You’ll need to be a US citizen (drat!), aged 30-55, and have a master’s degree in a STEM field, a minimum of 1,000 hours piloting an aircraft or two years experience in a STEM doctoral programme. Easy peasy.
CHAPEA 1’s volunteers are more than halfway through their year-long mission, after which CHAPEA 2 can commence. NASA has at least one more mission — CHAPEA 3 — to complete before it can get to work on the real thing.
Reddit’s going in the wrong direction with AI. Are we surprised?
Right ahead of Reddit’s launch of its IPO (initial public offering), it’s gone and soured the whole thing. According to a new Bloomberg report, the ‘front page of the internet’ has signed a contract that’ll see an unnamed artificial intelligence (AI) company dig its claws into the platform and train its models using the content published on the site.
The deal, according to the outlet’s sources familiar with the matter, is worth around $60-million (R1.13-billion) and was announced to prospective investors in Reddit’s IPO. That $60-million isn’t a once-off thing, either. Reddit could be collecting a fat paycheck annually, Bloomberg’s sources said.
Usually, AI companies looking to smarten themselves up would hit the open web to get their training hours in, often without permission, and ask for forgiveness later. The New York Times could be changing that soon, potentially opening Reddit up to the multi-billion dollar deal in an attempt to get their hours in, uh, legally.
The precedent set by the unnamed AI company in question could drastically alter how AI functions forever. Companies like OpenAI and Apple have been seeking similar deals — though reportedly worth far less — with news publications to keep their AI models as accurate as possible. With figures like $60-million being thrown around, there’s a chance news companies are about to get a whole lot richer.
