All of my opinions are italicized and sources are in blue.
10 or so years ago, this wouldn’t have been needed since mostly everything had a user serviceable battery. Nowadays, batteries are locked behind slabs of glass and mountains of glue. In some cases, even opening your device would void your warranty. The EU is fixing this problem by making EVERY battery replaceable.
In a press release, the European Council’s new regulation states that portable batteries incorporated into appliances must have a removable and replaceable battery that the end-user can access, including Apple’s iPhone. The EU states operators (OEMs) will have until 2027 in the region to produce devices that fit the new criteria. These rules only apply to the EU member states, but it would cost more for a company to have a worldwide model and an EU model instead of just putting replaceable batteries into everything.
This mandate also “provides for mandatory minimum levels of recycled content for industrial, SLI batteries and EV batteries. These are initially set at 16% for cobalt, 85% for lead, 6% for lithium and 6% for nickel”. The regulation introduces “labeling and information requirements, among other things on the battery’s components and recycled content, and an electronic “battery passport” and a QR code. Labeling requirements will apply by 2026 and the QR code by 2027”.
In short, this is a good thing for the consumer. You can easily replace your battery once it is degraded and save money doing so. It also seems that hot-swappable batteries may be making a return to phones, tablets, and laptops. Instead of waiting hours for a recharge, you could just pop off the back and insert a fully charged one.
No matter how you try to spin it, loot boxes are essentially gambling for children. You pay money in order to have a chance at winning something. You could argue that you are spending fake currency for the loot boxes. But, in reality, you don’t make enough in-game cash in order to buy loot boxes for free.
The UK games industry has agreed with these claims and has decided to act upon it. Ukie, the body that represents games companies, has published principles that it believes will allow the industry to self-regulate the use of loot boxes. The first is a commitment to make available technological controls to effectively restrict anyone under 18 from acquiring a loot box without the consent or knowledge of a parent or guardian. Many of these controls are already available on games platforms but aren’t as widely used as they could be. The second is to drive awareness of those controls with a public information campaign. Lastly, Ukie says games companies will disclose the presence of loot boxes before someone chooses to buy a title, and games will have to show clear probabilities before the purchase of a loot box.
All of these measures combined should fix the accidental purchases of loot boxes by children. Ukie would review the progress of these principles in 12 months.
On Tuesday, Meta announced Llama 2, a new source-available family of AI language models notable for its commercial license, which means the models can be integrated into commercial products, unlike its predecessor. They range in size from 7 to 70 billion parameters and reportedly “outperform open source chat models on most benchmarks we tested,” according to Meta. “This is going to change the landscape of the LLM market,” tweeted Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun. “Llama-v2 is available on Microsoft Azure and will be available on AWS, Hugging Face, and other providers.” While it can’t match OpenAI’s GPT-4 in performance, Llama 2 apparently fares well for a source-available model. According to Jim Fan, senior AI scientist at Nvidia, “70B is close to GPT-3.5 on reasoning tasks, but there is a significant gap on coding benchmarks. It’s on par or better than PaLM-540B on most benchmarks, but still far behind GPT-4 and PaLM-2-L.”
Currently, anyone can request access to download Llama 2 by filling out a form on Meta’s website.
Microsoft and Sony have finally reached a deal for keeping Call of Duty on PlayStation once the Activision Blizzard merger goes through. “We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard,” Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer tweeted on July 16. “We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games”. This deal is just for COD, it used to be “all existing Activision console titles on Sony, including future versions in the Call of Duty franchise or any other current Activision franchise on Sony through December 31st, 2027”.
Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have officially postponed their merger deadline to allow more time for the $69 billion deal to gain approval from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. Activision Blizzard CCO and EVP of corporate affairs Lulu Cheng Meservey announced on Twitter a three month extension to the deal after it failed to go through under its initial deadline of July 18. Microsoft must therefore complete its acquisition of Activision Blizzard by October 18 or pay several billion dollars in a reverse termination fee. Microsoft president Brad Smith shared further details about the deal in another tweet, including its new, even bigger termination fee, up from the $3 billion set originally. Microsoft will now have to pay Activision Blizzard $3.5 billion if the deal does not close before August 29, and $4.5 billion if it fails to close before September 15.
After the extension, the FTC dropped its antitrust case seeking to block Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard. The FTC could re-file this administrative challenge, all while Microsoft continues to negotiate with the UK’s CMA.
Reddit user kaefer_kriegerin wrote a joke post about how Glorbo was introduced into World of Warcraft after being hinted in 1994. The purpose of this was to trick an AI writer going by the name of Lucy Reed on the gaming website The Portal. It is quite obvious that Lucy is an AI since “she” writes over 50 articles a day and constantly repeats talking points in the articles. The AI even wrote stories about the comment section on the original post. One of the devs also got into it and posted on Twitter about how it feels “good to be able to talk about Glorbo finally, I remember my first day at Blizzard we were just starting to work on implementation, and that was almost 15 years ago!”
While the original article was deleted, someone did manage to archive it.
For those who don’t know, Framework is a small laptop company with a dream to make upgradable and repairable laptops the norm again. While larger manufacturers have rumored that they would make modular and repairable laptops, all of those were just concepts and Framework was the only company that launched a product. Their first laptop, the Framework laptop 13, originally launched with a 11th gen Intel CPU. Now, over a year later, you can upgrade that laptop to 13th gen Intel or AMD Ryzen. The I/O is also hot swappable with the option of USB-A, USB-C, DisplayPort, HDMI, Micro SD, and Ethernet.
Much like its smaller sibling, the Framework Laptop 16 is one of the most upgradable and repairable modern laptops in the world. Instead of having only 4 expansion bays, the 16 has 7 of them. Six for the I/O cards and one for a GPU. This is one of the few laptops to ever have upgradeable GPUs.
While nothing else has been announced, it is possible to use the GPU expansion slot for more than a GPU. Some ideas could be a bigger battery or more M.2 slots. Sadly, the GPU expansion bay is not hot swappable and it does require the use of a screwdriver. The only option at the moment is the RX 7700S from AMD, but it is highly likely that more GPUs will be coming down the line. Framework has delivered on the promises of their 13 inch laptop, so why would they bail now.
One feature that I have never seen before is a customizable keyboard. Besides the usual options such as RGB, you can add a numpad or a macropad. These will slot into the laptop without the use of tools and you have the option to put the numpad/macropad on the left or right. Even the bezel is customizable.
If all of this sounds intriguing, then you better pre-order fast. Orders have been pushed back to Q1 of 2024 due to high demand. If you change your mind while you were waiting, the $100 deposit is fully refundable. The same is also true with the 13 inch if you don’t need a GPU.
AMD may launch 7800 and 7700 next month, RX 7900 to follow
Elon announces xAI to “understand the universe”. (Despite advocating for a pause in AI development in March)
Norway Temporarily Bans Meta from “behavioral advertisement,” threatens $100K a day fines for violations of Norwegian Privacy law. (It’s like fining you a fraction of a cent per day)
Typo leaks millions of US military emails to Mali web operator
Pokemon Sleep: Gamifying sleep and recording your farts
ChatGPT for Android launches next week
US Gov launches “Cyber Trust Mark” to indicate cybersecurity (Why not make everything safe)
