Sony’s new slimmer PS5 could be on its way sooner than expected. Leakers have managed to snap a few pics of the new console in all its fish-tail glory. Plus, if these leaks are right, we may only need to wait a little more than a week before the PS5 starts shipping to U.S.-based customers.
Formula 1 may do its preseason tests right before the new schedule of races begins, but Formula E holds its trials months before the first E-Prix. The official action starts in Mexico City in January, but last week the all-electric series took to the turns of Valencia for its annual preseason test. 2024’s Season 10 will be the second for the ultra-efficient Gen3 car, following a debut that delivered lots of wheel-to-wheel racing and a hard-fought driver’s championship that was decided in the final two races. While there isn’t a new car this year, there’s still plenty to know before the lights go out in Mexico.
Teams lost a considerable amount of track time after a battery fire following the Tuesday morning session. The Race reports that the incident occurred in a pit stall occupied by WAE, the all-electric series’ battery supplier. The fire reportedly started from a battery that had been removed from the DS Penske driven by rookie Robert Shwartzman for three separate stints. Shwartzman had to stop on track due to an issue and once the car was back in the pit lane, the battery was removed and taken to WAE for inspection. Motorsport.com reports that the automatic battery safety system was activated causing the driver to stop. According to The Race, witnesses say there was a small audible explosion about 90 minutes after the car came to a halt on the circuit.
Formula E canceled the Tuesday afternoon and both Wednesday sessions while it looked into the cause of the fire. One person was taken to the hospital as a precaution but was released without any treatment. The series’ governing body, the FIA, deemed conditions safe to resume testing on Thursday afternoon following “investigations and findings provided by the technical suppliers,” Formula E explained.
As The Race notes, there has never been a traction battery fire at an E-Prix in nearly 10 years of events. There were incidents in 2015 and 2017, but those affected the smaller 12-volt battery. This was also unrelated to the new Attack Charge as Shwartzman had yet to demo that infrastructure. Formula E only had eight units for 11 teams and DS Penske didn’t have one at the time, The Race reports.
During the preseason test in Valencia, teams were required to put rookie drivers in their cars for three of the 18 scheduled hours of running. The lineup included former F2 driver Robert Shwartzman (DS Penske) and current F2 drivers Victor Martins (Nissan) and Zane Maloney (Andretti), among others. The rookie test saw the first female driver in a Gen3 Formula E car as well. LMP3 and GT4 driver Gabriela Jilkova got behind the wheel of the Porsche team’s EVs, completing a 46-lap run. Formula E previously held rookie tests ahead of the Berlin E-Prix and during an extra practice session in Rome, both happening earlier this year.
During a 10-hour session last Friday, Formula E held a simulated race, giving teams a 27-lap trial to test setups, run through safety car periods and demo the upcoming Attack Charge pit stops. The series had planned to introduce the stops last season, but supply-chain issues meant the technology would only be ready for the final few races. By then, Formula E felt it would be too late and decided to postpone the debut of Attack Charge to this season.
A first look at fast charging 👀🔋 pic.twitter.com/OLrvwLVO50
— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) October 24, 2023
There is still a lot of unknown about how the stops will work, but what we do know is that they will take place during a specific window Formula E officials will announce right before the race. The series has also said that teams will be unable to double stack their two cars, a practice of pitting both vehicles back-to-back, which could lead to some interesting decisions about which driver gets priority. An Attack Charge stop is also expected to be quite long at 30-35 seconds. A mechanic hooks up a charging cable to the back of the car while the battery is replenished.
After strong showings at the start of the Gen3 era last season, it looks like Jaguar TCS Racing and TAG Heuer Porsche are going to be contenders once again. Jaguar and Porsche vehicles claimed four of the top five times in each of the three test sessions, including quick laps from the Envision team that runs Jaguar powertrains.
Jaguar’s Mitch Evans posted the fastest time of the week, notching a 1m24.474s mark that was over half a second quicker than the fastest lap in last year’s test. Evans, who finished third in the driver’s championship in Season nine, also topped the times in the second session. New teammate Nick Cassidy, who finished second in the championship last season while driving for Envision, kept Evans from sweeping all three sessions with a 1m24.617s in the final running of the week.
Season nine was one to forget for Mahindra. The team that’s been in Formula E since the series began finished 10th out of 11. Significant offseason changes include an all-new driver pairing of Edoardo Mortara and Season seven champ Nyck De Vries. Mortara was fifth fastest in the first session of the week while De Vries posted the third best time in session two. Mahindra was hampered by the battery fire as it suffered damage to its equipment and both cars, but both drivers showed great pace at different points during the week.
19 of the 21 drivers set lap times within 0.7 seconds of each other during the last session of the week. Sure, that’s one-lap pace as opposed to managing all of the nuances of a Formula E race (like energy consumption and regeneration), but it’s clear the drivers are learning how to unlock the potential of the Gen3 cars. Last year, for example, teams were grappling with new cars and new tires, having to figure out the optimal performance for a harder Hankook compound.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/formula-e-preseason-testing-2023-five-key-takeaways-from-valencia-133234132.html?src=rss
Formula 1 may do its preseason tests right before the new schedule of races begins, but Formula E holds its trials months before the first E-Prix. The official action starts in Mexico City in January, but last week the all-electric series took to the turns of Valencia for its annual preseason test. 2024’s Season 10 will be the second for the ultra-efficient Gen3 car, following a debut that delivered lots of wheel-to-wheel racing and a hard-fought driver’s championship that was decided in the final two races. While there isn’t a new car this year, there’s still plenty to know before the lights go out in Mexico.
Teams lost a considerable amount of track time after a battery fire following the Tuesday morning session. The Race reports that the incident occurred in a pit stall occupied by WAE, the all-electric series’ battery supplier. The fire reportedly started from a battery that had been removed from the DS Penske driven by rookie Robert Shwartzman for three separate stints. Shwartzman had to stop on track due to an issue and once the car was back in the pit lane, the battery was removed and taken to WAE for inspection. Motorsport.com reports that the automatic battery safety system was activated causing the driver to stop. According to The Race, witnesses say there was a small audible explosion about 90 minutes after the car came to a halt on the circuit.
Formula E canceled the Tuesday afternoon and both Wednesday sessions while it looked into the cause of the fire. One person was taken to the hospital as a precaution but was released without any treatment. The series’ governing body, the FIA, deemed conditions safe to resume testing on Thursday afternoon following “investigations and findings provided by the technical suppliers,” Formula E explained.
As The Race notes, there has never been a traction battery fire at an E-Prix in nearly 10 years of events. There were incidents in 2015 and 2017, but those affected the smaller 12-volt battery. This was also unrelated to the new Attack Charge as Shwartzman had yet to demo that infrastructure. Formula E only had eight units for 11 teams and DS Penske didn’t have one at the time, The Race reports.
During the preseason test in Valencia, teams were required to put rookie drivers in their cars for three of the 18 scheduled hours of running. The lineup included former F2 driver Robert Shwartzman (DS Penske) and current F2 drivers Victor Martins (Nissan) and Zane Maloney (Andretti), among others. The rookie test saw the first female driver in a Gen3 Formula E car as well. LMP3 and GT4 driver Gabriela Jilkova got behind the wheel of the Porsche team’s EVs, completing a 46-lap run. Formula E previously held rookie tests ahead of the Berlin E-Prix and during an extra practice session in Rome, both happening earlier this year.
During a 10-hour session last Friday, Formula E held a simulated race, giving teams a 27-lap trial to test setups, run through safety car periods and demo the upcoming Attack Charge pit stops. The series had planned to introduce the stops last season, but supply-chain issues meant the technology would only be ready for the final few races. By then, Formula E felt it would be too late and decided to postpone the debut of Attack Charge to this season.
A first look at fast charging 👀🔋 pic.twitter.com/OLrvwLVO50
— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) October 24, 2023
There is still a lot of unknown about how the stops will work, but what we do know is that they will take place during a specific window Formula E officials will announce right before the race. The series has also said that teams will be unable to double stack their two cars, a practice of pitting both vehicles back-to-back, which could lead to some interesting decisions about which driver gets priority. An Attack Charge stop is also expected to be quite long at 30-35 seconds. A mechanic hooks up a charging cable to the back of the car while the battery is replenished.
After strong showings at the start of the Gen3 era last season, it looks like Jaguar TCS Racing and TAG Heuer Porsche are going to be contenders once again. Jaguar and Porsche vehicles claimed four of the top five times in each of the three test sessions, including quick laps from the Envision team that runs Jaguar powertrains.
Jaguar’s Mitch Evans posted the fastest time of the week, notching a 1m24.474s mark that was over half a second quicker than the fastest lap in last year’s test. Evans, who finished third in the driver’s championship in Season nine, also topped the times in the second session. New teammate Nick Cassidy, who finished second in the championship last season while driving for Envision, kept Evans from sweeping all three sessions with a 1m24.617s in the final running of the week.
Season nine was one to forget for Mahindra. The team that’s been in Formula E since the series began finished 10th out of 11. Significant offseason changes include an all-new driver pairing of Edoardo Mortara and Season seven champ Nyck De Vries. Mortara was fifth fastest in the first session of the week while De Vries posted the third best time in session two. Mahindra was hampered by the battery fire as it suffered damage to its equipment and both cars, but both drivers showed great pace at different points during the week.
19 of the 21 drivers set lap times within 0.7 seconds of each other during the last session of the week. Sure, that’s one-lap pace as opposed to managing all of the nuances of a Formula E race (like energy consumption and regeneration), but it’s clear the drivers are learning how to unlock the potential of the Gen3 cars. Last year, for example, teams were grappling with new cars and new tires, having to figure out the optimal performance for a harder Hankook compound.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/formula-e-preseason-testing-2023-five-key-takeaways-from-valencia-133234132.html?src=rss
YouTube is no longer preventing just a small subset of its userbase from accessing its videos if they have an ad blocker. The platform has gone all out in its fight against the use of add-ons, extensions and programs that prevent it from serving ads to viewers around the world, it confirmed to Engadget. “The use of ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service,” a spokesperson told us. “We’ve launched a global effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience. Ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube.”
YouTube started cracking down on the use of ad blockers earlier this year. It initially showed pop-ups to users telling them that it’s against the website’s TOS, and then it put a timer on those notifications to make sure people read it. By June, it took on a more aggressive approach and warned viewers that they wouldn’t be able to play more than three videos unless they disable their ad blockers. That was a “small experiment” meant to urge users to enable ads or to try YouTube Premium, which the website has now expanded to its entire userbase. Some people can’t even play videos on Microsoft Edge and Firefox browsers even if they don’t have ad blockers, according to Android Police, but we weren’t able to replicate that behavior.
People are unsurprisingly unhappy about the development and have taken to social networks like Reddit to air their grievances. If they don’t want to enable ads, after all, the only way they can watch videos with no interruptions is to pay for a YouTube Premium subscription. Indeed, the notification viewers get heavily promotes the subscription service. “Ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide,” it says. But with YouTube Premium, viewers can go ad-free, and “creators can still get paid from [their] subscription.”
The website raised Premium’s rates to $14 a month in July from $12 before that. YouTube Premium also gives users access to offline viewing, background playback and higher-quality 1080p streaming, but it could be too expensive for those who just want an ad-free experience. The platform used to offer a more affordable option called Premium Lite in certain European regions, and it only cost €7 ($7.42) a month to remove advertisements from videos. However, it never made Lite available worldwide and ultimately killed that option by the end of October.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-is-taking-its-fight-against-ad-blockers-global-122041223.html?src=rss
Microsoft’s generative AI work assistant Copilot will debut to millions of enterprise customers Wednesday. Chief Information Officers around the country are stepping up training in preparation for the Microsoft 365 product launch, according to the Wall Street Journal, and it may be a change coming to your office place…
Following President Joe Biden’s sweeping executive order regarding AI development last week, at the UK AI Safety Summit yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced even more machine learning initiatives, as well as the establishment of the United States AI Safety Institute. In cooperation with the Department of Commerce, the Biden administration will establish the United States AI Safety Institute (US AISI) within the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). It will be responsible for creating and publishing guidelines, benchmark tests, best practices and more, for evaluating potentially dangerous AI systems. Tests may even include the red-team exercises President Biden mentioned in his executive order last week.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — it’s an acronym-heavy morning — will release the administration’s first draft policy guidance on government AI use later this week.
— Mat Smith
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The Google Pixel 7a is cheaper than ever at $374 in this early Black Friday deal
Apple’s Scary Fast Mac event: Everything announced about the M3 MacBook Pro and M3 iMac
Samsung credits strong smartphone and mobile display sales for income growth
Microsoft’s Windows 11 2023 update brings Copilot AI to more users
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio packs a unique blend of performance and adaptability — even among 2-in-1 PCs. Thanks to refreshed specs plus a USB-A port and a microSD card reader, it seems like Microsoft’s second-gen mobile workstation has pretty much everything it needs. Unfortunately, with a high starting price and costly upgrades, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is still difficult to recommend to everyone.
Google’s new feature for Chrome on iOS doesn’t massively change the browser, but it could be helpful if you find tapping the top of your iPhone screen a bit of a stretch. The company has rolled out the ability to move the browser’s address bar to the bottom of the screen from the top, a la Safari. Oddly, this isn’t yet a feature in Android’s Chrome app.
Continue reading.
Tesla was not at fault for a fatal 2019 crash that allegedly involved its Autopilot system, according to a jury in California. It’s the first US trial for a case claiming its software directly caused a death, with the car’s driver killed in the crash. The lawsuit alleged Tesla knowingly shipped cars with a defective Autopilot system. The jury ultimately found there was no defect, and Tesla was cleared on Tuesday.
The Ayaneo Kun is the highest-spec gaming machine the company has ever made, and after using it for a couple of weeks, Engadget’s James Trew says it’s both a fantastic gaming handheld and (if you want) a decent portable general-use PC. But it feels, he said, that the Kun is just a placeholder for the Kun 2, or the Kun 1S, Kun Pro or… whatever they call the next upgraded handheld. Notable specs include a huge 75Wh battery and the ability to play games at 1600p resolution — a substantial nudge above the usual 1200p max of other Ayaneo devices. Read on for the full breakdown.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-us-government-announces-ai-safety-institute-111551804.html?src=rss
Microsoft’s generative AI work assistant Copilot will debut to millions of enterprise customers Wednesday. Chief Information Officers around the country are stepping up training in preparation for the Microsoft 365 product launch, according to the Wall Street Journal, and it may be a change coming to your office place…
Not one, but two giant crocodile movies are on the way. Get a sumptuous look at Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron in a new video. Plus, it’s spaghetti Thursdays on the next episode of Rick & Morty. Happy spoiloween, everybody!
It’s hard to imagine that the next Marvel movie is out in just a few weeks, but here we are—The Marvels is set to fly into cinemas November 10 and we’re only just getting our first extended look at the film. At least it’s a pretty fun one?
A bunch of Sony headphones, earbuds and other audio devices are on sale at Amazon, including the Sony WH-CH720N headset, which is currently selling for the lowest price we’ve seen for it on the website. You can get the noise canceling wireless headphones for $98, down 35 percent from their original list price of $150. They have a lightweight, over-ear design with ample space around your ears so that they’d be comfortable to use. And while you can completely block out outside noise for full immersion, you can also switch on their Adjustable Ambient Sound mode that comes with 20 levels for when you want to be aware of your surroundings.
You can pair the WH-CH720N with two Bluetooth devices at the same time, and you can easily switch between them at the touch of a button. Plus, the model supports both Alexa and Google’s voice assistants, and Sony says it can last for up to 35 hours on a single charge.
The most deeply discounted product among the ones currently on sale, however, are the Sony WH-XB910N wireless headphones. They have the power to enhance low-end frequencies for extra bass with their “dedicated bass duct on the headphone housing” and “increased airtightness between the driver units and eardrums.” The headphones use dual noise cancelation technology to keep ambient sounds out, and like the WH-CH720N, you can quickly switch between two connected Bluetooth devices. You can get the Sony WH-XB910N headphones right now for $118, which isn’t quite a record-low for the model but is still 53 percent lower than its original price.
If you’re looking for earbuds instead of headphones, you can also grab a pair of Sony LinkBuds S with noise canceling capabilities for $128 (36 percent off) from the sale. Want earbuds designed to let ambient sounds in? The Sony LinkBuds earbuds with an open-ring design now also cost $128, or 29 percent less than their original list price. Finally, you can find deals on subwoofers and sound bars from Amazon, as well, if those are what you’ve been eyeing for the upcoming holiday season.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sony-anc-headphones-are-up-to-53-percent-off-at-amazon-095038076.html?src=rss
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