TT Show Episode 26 - Dune gets an epic new game and Samsung sends Galaxy phones into Space
The TT show is back, and this week, Jak and Kosta take a closer look at several cool-looking games on the horizon. With the smash hit Dune Part Two now in cinemas, the sci-fi franchise is getting a massive open-world survival MMO called Dune Awakening from the creators of Conan Exiles. With new info and gameplay, the Arrakis-set title is looking very spicy.
The duo also looks at PlayStation classic Ghost of Tsushima, finally coming to PC (Assassin's Creed meets Shogun), and the breathtaking indie action RPG No Rest for the Wicked.
In the world of science and space, Jak brings up Samsung's recent (and super fun) marketing stunt, which sent Galaxy phones into the lower atmosphere to take a few snaps of planet Earth. Plus, new solar-powered implants that can restore someone's vision are paving the way for a Cyberpunk future.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was asked if he trusts himself with the power of AGI
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind GPT-4, ChatGPT, Sora, and many other industry-leading AI technologies, has sat down for an interview with Lex Fridman to discuss multiple topics regarding artificial intelligence and the impressive creations being made at OpenAI.
Lex Fridman asked Altman if he trusts himself with the power of leading a company that could potentially create the first Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), an AI system that is capable of human-level and beyond intelligence. Altman responded honourably to the question, saying that he believes that its important that "I nor any other one person have total control over OpenAI, or over AGI, and I think you want a robust governance system."
The OpenAI CEO further explained that he "continues to not want super voting control over OpenAI" and "I continue to think that no company should be making these decisions and that we really need governments to put rules of the road in place."
Your Apple ID might be getting a big new name change
Whether you've been using Apple devices for years or just picked up your first iPhone, you'll be familiar with the Apple ID. It's your login for all things Apple and it's been the key to accessing your devices and services for a long time. But a new report suggests that the humble Apple ID is about to change in an attempt to better reflect the way that it is used.
Apple IDs are now used as a method of authentication for third-party apps, Apple itself, the Apple Store, and more and that means that its name perhaps doesn't best fit the way people think about it. Now, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple intends to rebrand the Apple ID to Apple Account, changing the branding across all Apple devices as well as the iCloud.com website. The move could happen this year, Gurman wrote in the latest Power On weekly newsletter.
Gurman's report matches a previous one by MacRumors that suggested such a move was in the works. Gurman says that Apple will start to use the new Apple Account branding later this year with iOS 18 and watchOS 11 among the first software releases to initiate the switch. Those releases are all expected to debut this June at the annual WWDC event, while the updates aren't expected to arrive on devices until this fall.
Continue reading: Your Apple ID might be getting a big new name change (full post)
Buying an 11-inch OLED iPad Pro could be easier said than done, at least initially
Apple is very much expected to update the iPad Pro lineup of tablets within the next few weeks with upgraded OLED displays as one of the biggest additions. The iPad Pro will of course come in two sizes with an 11-inch model and a 12.9-inch version offering plenty of flexibility, but those who want to buy the smaller of the two might find it harder to pick up than the larger one.
That's according to a new report by 9to5Mac based on a post on the X social network by Ross Young, a display history with a strong track record in terms of sharing details about Apple's upcoming plans. According to the analyst and his DSCC firm, Apple has found it difficult to choose which OLED suppliers to use with LG Display and Samsung Display involved.
It was thought that Samsung Display would be the only company responsible for producing the OLED panels that would be used in the 11-inch iPad Pro but that now seems to have changed with LG Display also involved in production. However, it also appears that the production of the 11-inch OLED displays now lag behind that of the larger 12.9-inch version as a result and that could mean that there will be fewer iPad Pro models of that size available on launch day.
YouTube rolls out safeguards to battle the rise of AI generated video
YouTube has taken to its blog to announce a new rule for its platform designed to protect users from being deceived by creators who are trying to pass off their content as authentic when it was created using the assistance of artificial intelligence-powered tools.
With the unveiling of OpenAI's Sora tool, which is designed to create photorealistic video content from user text prompts, and the popularity of ChatGPT, it isn't a reach to say that AI-powered tools such as Sora will be popular when they are fully developed and released.
Some of the video examples provided by Sora creator OpenAI featured tell-tale signs of AI-powered creation, but the vast majority at a glance, or even viewed by the untrained eye, wouldn't raise alarm bells for synthetic creation, further blurring the line between what's real and what's fake on the internet.
Continue reading: YouTube rolls out safeguards to battle the rise of AI generated video (full post)
Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection could be the worst PC and Console release of 2024
It sounded like a slam dunk, taking the beloved multiplayer game series from 2004 and 2005 and bringing it back online in remastered form with support for modern PC hardware and consoles.
Not to be confused with EA and DICE's recent reboot, the original Star Wars Battlefront (2004) and Star Wars Battlefront II (2005) took iconic settings from the original and prequel trilogies and gave them a massively multiplayer Battlefield-style makeover. Although fans have kept these games alive on PC with mods and private servers, they were primed and ready for a comeback.
When news dropped that Aspyr and Lucasfilm Games were releasing a remastered Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection on March 14, 2024 - with support for up to 64 players - many gamers got their nostalgia glasses ready for a fun trip down memory lane. Except it was anything but.
Fatal Fury City of the Wolves is the first game in the iconic SNK fighting series in 26 years
When you think of the fighting game genre, odds are you're thinking about Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, two franchises that date back to the early 1990s and are still going strong. Suppose you grew up during that period and spent many afternoons at the local arcade. In that case, there is no doubt you'd be aware of SNK and its iconic output, including series like Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, and Samurai Shodown.
Interestingly, Fatal Fury, the SNK fighting game franchise that began in 1991 (making it one of the oldest fighting games in video game history), hasn't received a new entry since 1999, when Garou: Mark of the Wolves was released.
Fast-forward to 2024, and SNK has announced that Fatal Fury will return in early 2025 after a 26-year absence.
Easy Anti-Cheat responds to Apex Legends pro players being hacked mid-game
In what seems like a first, Apex Legends professional players were hijacked by a hacker during the Apex Legends Global Series to be given cheats, resulting in the NA finals being postponed.
The Apex Legends North American finals were infiltrated by at least two hackers named "Destroyer2009" and "R4andom", who managed to somehow gain access to at least two professional players' PCs during a match. As the match was being streamed to thousands of fans around the world, a message box briefly popped up and then disappeared, which was followed by the player realizing that they had aimbot, wallhacks, and other cheats. Shortly after the discovery, the match was promptly ended.
Following the shutdown of the match Anti-Cheat Police Department, a group of volunteers that specialize in gathering intelligence on cheats to detect and disrupt cheating vendors, took to its X account to provide a public service announcement, stating that an RCE exploit was used to gain access to the players' PCs. For those that don't know, an RCE exploit is a "remote code execution", which means the hackers were able to execute codes on the target machines remotely.
OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Google, Tesla, and more are all on the NVIDIA Blackwell train
NVIDIA has unveiled its next-gen Blackwell AI GPU, which features 208 billion transistors, 192GB of super-fast HBM3E memory, a cutting-edge custom TSMC 4NP process, and groundbreaking new networking that sees NVIDIA NVLink deliver 1.8TB/s bidirectional throughput per GPU.
The company also announced its new NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip, which connects two NVIDIA B200 Tensor Core GPUs to the NVIDIA Grace CPU "over a 900GB/s ultra-low-power NVLink chip-to-chip interconnect." With serious AI horsepower, NVIDIA's powerful next-gen AI hardware arrives during the AI boom, so, unsurprisingly, it announced its long list of Blackwell partners.
NVIDIA writes, "Among the many organizations expected to adopt Blackwell are Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Tesla, and xAI." Even though most, if not all, of these companies are investing in creating their own AI chips and hardware for generative AI-which is used in everything from scientific research to medicine and chatbots-Blackwell will drive many of the advances over the next few years.
Microsoft and NVIDIA to integrate generative AI and Omniverse tech in Azure and Microsoft 365
It's been a massive day for AI news, with NVIDIA's premiere GTC 2024 AI conference underway. Earlier today, the company unveiled its next-gen Blackwell AI GPU - an unprecedented AI monster with 208 billion transistors and 192GB of super-fast HBM3E memory.
NVIDIA's first multi-GPU die is built on a cutting-edge TSMC 4NP process. It allows organizations to run real-time generative AI on "trillion-parameter large language models" at up to 25X less cost and energy consumption than its Hopper predecessor. Throw in the latest version of NVIDIA NVLink that delivers 1.8TB/s bidirectional throughput per GPU, and it's no wonder everyone is signing up to join the Blackwell family - including Microsoft.
Alongside the big Blackwell reveal, NVIDIA and Microsoft have announced that Microsoft Azure will adopt NVIDIA Grace Blackwell Superchips to help accelerate customer and first-party (Microsoft's own) AI offerings, Including Microsoft 365, aka the online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA Triton Inference Server will help power Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365.
NVIDIA Audio2Face uses AI to generate lip synching and facial animation, showcased in two games
Localization is a big thing in gaming, where a game's dialogue and presentation are recorded in various languages to reach a global audience. Like how Netflix dubs all of its original programming into multiple languages, localization for games is a complex process that requires accurately translating dialogue and text, maintaining dramatic or comedic tones, and then re-recording dialogue with voice actors from different countries.
Where games differ from movies or television drama is that all performances are digital and completely malleable, which is why you've got a situation where Sony's PlayStation-exclusive Ghost of Tsushima (which is coming soon to PC) offers both English and native Japanese language options with full lip-syncing and correct facial animation.
Although it's possible to do this for dozens of languages, Ghost of Tsushima limits full lip-synching to two language options due to the task's complexity and the animation involved. This is where generative AI, specifically NVIDIA's Audio2Face technology, will step in.