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A group of researchers affiliated with Northwestern University, MIT, and the University of Vermont have given a simple request to a custom AI.

The AI system that was prompted is trained on robot designing data while taking into account "billions of years" of evolution on Earth. According to Sam Kriegman, lead researcher on the study and an assistant professor of computer science, mechanical engineering, and chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering.

Kriegman is also a member of the Center for Robotics and Biosystems and explained in the above video that his team simply requested this AI program to "Design a robot that can walk". In 26 seconds, the AI produced a blueprint for a robot that was then created through 3D printing. The video suggests there were at least 10 designs before arriving at the design that actually walks, and according to a press release on the Northwestern website, the AI self-corrected these design flaws and by itself arrived at the inclusion of "legs".

An illustrator has taken to X, formerly called Twitter, to accuse Disney of using an AI-generated image as promotional material for its upcoming release of Loki season 2.

The illustrator is Katria Raden, who took to her personal X account with a post that breaks down the image recently published on the official Loki X account. The illustrator explains that the background image of the spiraling clock shows "numerals on the clock turning into meaningless squiggles or just being meaningless squiggles," which are "telltale signs" of an AI being involved in its creation.

Raden went on to publish a link to the stock image that was purportedly used to create the background image used in the Loki promotional. Additionally, the stock image was sourced from Shutterstock and was not labeled as AI-generated. However, content by the same author also contained these "telltale signs" of AI-generated images. Furthermore, Shutterstock policy prohibits any AI-generated content that isn't made with its own in-house AI Image Generator tool.

NASA has shared an image on its social media that briefly captured the attention of millions - "A Bear on Mars?"

The image was originally captured on December 12, 2022, by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which is designed to search for the existence of water on Mars and provide critical support for missions on the Martian surface by acting as a relay station for information. MRO snaps photographs of the Mars landscape from an altitude of 156 miles, and one such image was shared to the University of Arizona's blog on January 25, 2023, that sparked attention.

The "Bear on Mars" is a prime example of the phenomenon called, which is the tendency to see faces or meaning within an image of an object/s that has none. Looking at the image, we can see a V-shaped hill that creates the bear's nose, two impact craters make up the eyes, and a circular fracture pattern creates the head. NASA explains that it's just a "a hill on Mars with a peculiar shape." This human phenomenon is commonly seen when people look up at clouds and notice shapes, people, animals, and more.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has highlighted an image snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope of the two galaxies named NGC 3558 and LEDA 83465.

The space agency explains in a new blog post that LEDA 83465 resides in the upper right of the image and NGC 3558 in the lower left. According to the blog post, these galaxies are approximately 450 million light years away from Earth, and are within a chaotic galaxy cluster called Abell 1185. What is interesting about these two galaxies is their distance, which the ESA writes is just 150,000 light years.

That may sound like a vast distance, but comparatively, the closest galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda at a distance of 2.5 million light years. The ESA writes on its official X account, the platform formerly named Twitter, "In galactic terms, they are practically on top of one another." Additionally, the space agency writes that due to the proximity of all the galaxies within the cluster, many are interacting gravitationally, which in some cases results in entire galaxies being consumed by larger ones.

Logitech's G502 gaming mouse has been around for many years and has been the go-to for many PC gamers with its iconic shape, performance, and ergonomics. When the G502 first hit the scene, there weren't anywhere near as many gaming mouse options as in 2023, so it's great to see the iconic design still kicking.

The Logitech G502 X PLUS is the latest wireless version of the mouse, incorporating the powerful HERO 25K Sensor, new LIGHTFORCE hybris switches, a redesigned scroll wheel, expansive RGB lighting, and nice-to-have flourishes like a removable DPI-switch button, rubberized grips, and a lightweight 106-gram build.

The new limited edition Logitech G502 X PLUS MILLENNIUM FALCON EDITION takes the latest design and adorns it with a schematic of the iconic ship from the Star Wars universe. A fitting tribute as the G502 is like the Millenium Falcon of the gaming mouse world.

As part of the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition Preview Driver for AMD Fluid Motion Frames, it looks like AMD has expanded the real-time monitoring for its Radeon hardware (specifically RDNA 3 GPUs) with the addition of a new metric - System Lag. This will allow Radeon RX 7000 GPU owners to monitor system latency, an important measurement tool for frame generation tech like Fluid Motion Frames.

Frame generation tech involves generating a frame between traditionally rendered frames to present a more fluid and performative image, a perceived performance increase that carries the cost of increased latency. NVIDIA mitigates this with tits Reflex technology, which you can monitor the effect of via GeForce overlays.

On the AMD side, introducing Anti-Lag+ (or using the existing Radeon Anti-Lag tech) is crucial in keeping the overall latency down to ensure that a game still feels great while looking smoother. The ability to look at System Lag via an overlay will make the whole process of enabling AMD Fluid Motion Frames and optimizing settings much easier. However, as of now, the monitoring is limited to Anti-Lag+ titles.

Buyer be aware, they say. A few weeks ago, I treated myself and bought Samsung's impressive Odyssey OLED G8 34-inch curved gaming monitor. It turns out I should have researched a little more before hitting the buy button.

Let's start with the positives, shall we? Samsung's Odyssey OLED G8 is a stunner. The panel is absolutely glorious. The colors, especially the blacks it produces through its OLED display, are amazing. Even just doing my usual work tasks in Windows is a joy. The image pops, and everything visually offers a great appearance and experience. Then comes gaming - my choice currently, Battlefield 2042 - and well, damn! Powered by the buttery smooth Inno3D GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, 34 inches of curved gaming goodness at 3440 x 1440, 175Hz refresh rate, and a blisteringly fast 0.03ms response time, the experience is golden - well, sort of.

The above paragraph probably makes you want to go right out and buy the Odyssey OLED G8. I wouldn't blame you - recommendations like the above made me do the same. But hold on. While the panel itself is one of the best you can buy currently, despite various firmware updates, some serious issues have yet to be fixed by Samsung since its release earlier this year.

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Unity CEO John Riccitiello is retiring from the company, an official press release has announced.

Unity today announced a significant leadership shake up. John Riccitiello will retire as acting chief executive officer, president, chairman, and board member of Unity. Riccitiello's retirement is immediate and Unity's board has appointed James Whitehurst as interim CEO of the engine-maker.

"It's been a privilege to lead Unity for nearly a decade and serve our employees, customers, developers and partners, all of whom have been instrumental to the Company's growth. I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the Company's future success," Riccitiello said in the press release.

Activision Blizzard games won't start showing up on Xbox Game Pass until 2024, the publisher today announced.

The $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision merger is expected to close by Friday, October 13, but gamers shouldn't expect to see a full Activision library up on Xbox Game Pass for several more months. Activision has clarified that it has no strategy to add Diablo IV or Modern Warfare III directly into Xbox Game Pass in 2023.

Instead, Activision-Blizzard and Microsoft will work to bring a catalog of games to Xbox Game Pass in 2024.

Remedy Entertainment's head of PR has some choice words about Microsoft's lower-end Xbox Series S, saying that some of the system's lower-end specs are a "big problem" for developers.

Remedy is known for pushing hardware to pretty extensive heights. From the original Max Payne games and Quantum Break on the Xbox One, to Control's impressive utilization of early raytracing on PC (via RTX cards) and Xbox Series X/PlayStation 5, the studio is known for pushing the envelope with its proprietary Northlight engine. This level of experience adds significant weight to Remedy's overall analysis of video games console hardware.

So when a studio like Remedy says that the Xbox Series S' weaker specs are an issue, then it means two things: one, we should listen and heed what is being said, and two, this isn't an isolated incident and other devs are likely experiencing frustrations with the Series S. We've seen first-party studios like Bethesda also saying that Starfield's 30FPS hard cap is there to ensure "consistency," which infers the FPS cap could have been lowered to ensure the Series X and Series S are uniform experiences. After all, the Series S has 37% less RAM and has a GPU with 60% less compute units than the Series X.

The video games industry has laid off more than 6,000 employees across all disciplines, startlingly disappointing figures from Video Games Layoffs.com indicate.

Most of the popular video game-related aggregator websites will track things like review scores, how many players are actively playing a specific game, or the prices of the games themselves. One site chronicles the more depressing state of the world's leading entertainment space: How many people have been laid off and let go, often from companies that generate billions of dollars of revenue a year.

According to the Video Games Layoffs website, an estimated 6,100 workers in the video games industry have been laid off throughout 2023 so far. The data includes games-related layoffs across platform-holders and game developers big and small, ranging from the Xbox games division and SEGA to the engine-makers at Unity and Epic as well as smaller-scale devs like Telltale Games.

Apple released iOS 17 to the public a few weeks ago and you don't need to buy a new iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Pro to get it. The update can be installed on a wide variety of models starting with the iPhone XS, and it seems that some people who have put it on their phones are now experiencing some strange Wi-Fi issues. What's more, the problem isn't limited to iPhones - some people with iPads are also reporting similar issues with iPadOS 17.

The problem, which doesn't appear to affect everyone, appears to cause a couple of main issues. Both of them can be highly irritating and problematic for those who are affected and, to date, there doesn't appear to be a proper fix.

The main issue is that some people find that their iPhone or iPad simply stops working on Wi-Fi. It will remain connected, but no data is transferred as if the connection to the internet has failed. However, users report that other devices connected to the same network continue to work as normal - and connectivity is often restored of its own accord, too.

When Apple announced that the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus would get last year's A16 Bionic chip rather than the A17 Pro that the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max boast, some wondered what other parts would be used. Now, we know one that definitely hasn't been repurposed - the modem.

As confirmed by one iFixit teardown expert, the Iphone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus both have the same modem as the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, despite having different chips. That means that Apple didn't just use leftover iPhone 14 Pro logic boards to build its new non-Pro iPhones.

This is all according to iFixit's Shahram Mokhtari who posted the news on X, the social network previously known as Twitter. According to them, Apple's new entry-level 2023 iPhones both have the same Qualcomm Snapdragon X70 modem as the high-end option. The iPhone 14 Pro had the X65.

Apple's Vision Pro headset was first announced during an event in June 2023 and it will finally go on sale in early 2024, the company claims. It'll cost a whopping $3500, but that isn't the only awkward thing - if you wear prescription glasses, you'll need to order extra Zeiss lenses for use with the headset.

That means that there is no room for people to wear their existing glasses when they put the headset on their faces. Apple wanted to make the headset as small as possible which meant not leaving space for anything between the face and the headset's displays. But a new report claims that Apple is already working on fixing the problem, although it isn't perfect. In the future, people might be able to order a Vision Pro headset with their prescription built in.

That's according to the latest Power On, a weekly newsletter from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. According to him, Apple's desire to slim the device down meant leaving no space for glasses. And the future fix could see Apple offering built-in lenses. However, there are problems with such an approach.

Following the continued rumors that Apple will use new OLED displays in the 2024 iPad Pro refresh, a new report now claims that the high-end 11- and 12.9-inch tablets won't be the only ones to make the move to the new display technology.

While the iPad Pros are set to get OLED next year, however, these other tablets are going to have to wait a little longer before they get their own upgrades. Details on timeframes are hard to come by, but they aren't likely to make the move next year.

This is all according to a new report by the technology research firm Omdia that was first reported by MacRumors. According to that report, Apple continues to discuss the idea of wider OLED adoption that will move beyond the iPad Pro to also include the iPad mini and iPad Air lineups. It's thought that LG Display and Samsung are going to be the main suppliers, although it's also said that Apple will likely look to bring other companies online as well.

Intel's Panther Lake processors may be a good distance down the line for Team Blue, but we've already had a sighting of support for these CPUs.

As VideoCardz reports, they've been spotted in AIDA64, the system info and diagnostics suite for PC.

The latest beta of AIDA64 (version 6.92.6610) was released last week and it comes with 'preliminary support,' the early groundwork for supporting Panther Lake when it actually arrives.

Windows 11 recently got the Copilot feature courtesy of Microsoft's Moment 4 update which rolled out at the end of September, but not everyone has the AI.

In actual fact, there are a couple of reasons you might not have Copilot, but what Microsoft has just confirmed is that there are certain regions which just aren't getting the AI - at least not yet - at all.

Only Windows 11 users in the US, UK, and some Asian and South American countries are getting Copilot rolled out to the finished version of the desktop OS.

NASA has completed its week of releasing new images snapped by the iconic Hubble Space Telescope with an image of the Type II Seyfert galaxy known as NGC 6951.

Hubble has pointed its old yet still extremely powerful instruments at the spiral galaxy that resides some 78 million light years away from Earth within the Cepheus constellation. NGC 6951 was originally discovered in 1877 by French astronomers Jerome Coggia and American astronomer Lewis Swift in 1878 and has since been a target for developing an understanding of stellar history.

NASA writes in its blog post that NGC 6951 experienced its peak of stellar formation approximately 800 million years ago, which it then sat quietly for about 3000 million years before ramping star production back up.

NASA has taken to its social media channels to announce when it will be showcasing its first asteroid sample to the world.

The same was collected as part of the space agency's OSIRIS-REx mission that recently dropped a capsule back to Earth containing what has been confirmed to be material from the surface of asteroid Bennu. This isn't the first time an asteroid sample has been returned to Earth, but it's a first for NASA.

The capsule landed in the Utah desert on September 24 and has since undergone preliminary examinations, with NASA announcing shortly after cracking open the capsule that it would need some time to transfer the material as there was much more present than initially anticipated.