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Astronomer Frank Drake formulated his influential equation in 1961 to estimate the number of civilizations in the Milky Way capable of communicating with us. Our understanding of planetary science has changed a lot since then, leading a team of scientists to propose a pair of important adjustments that produce an…

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Engineers at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation have created a robot capable of solving a Rubik’s Cube in an astonishing 0.305 seconds, setting a new Guinness World Record. This achievement, announced on May 23, highlights the robot’s extraordinary speed and the technological prowess of Mitsubishi’s motors.

Historically, solving a Rubik’s Cube has been a challenge for many, but it has also been a popular target for speed-solving competitions. The previous record for a robot was set in 2016 when the time first dipped below one second. Mitsubishi’s new record surpasses this by a significant margin, showcasing a leap in both speed and engineering.

New record: Fastest robot to solve a rotating puzzle cube – 0.305 seconds 🤯

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation knocked 0.07 seconds off the previous record 🤩 pic.twitter.com/WWZf2xusSc

— Guinness World Records (@GWR) May 23, 2024

The project was led by Tokui, who typically works on motor development at Mitsubishi; He leveraged the company’s advanced motors to build the robot, confident that they could outperform previous record holders. Tokui’s confidence was well-placed, as the robot managed to solve the puzzle on its second attempt, after an initial setback due to the Rubik’s Cube jamming.

Achieving this record required not only incredibly fast motors, but also a high-quality Rubik’s Cube that could withstand the rapid movements without breaking or jamming. The engineers’ meticulous attention to detail and their ability to fine-tune the timing by milliseconds were crucial to their success.

Tokui expressed his excitement and satisfaction with the project, emphasizing the fun and motivation throughout the process. He hopes this record will demonstrate the capabilities of Mitsubishi’s products and their potential to improve various applications.

Mitsubishi Robot Sets Record By Solving Rubik’s Cube In 0.3 Seconds

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In the last few months, news organizations have leapt into bed with OpenAI, hatching Faustian bargains where the cash-strapped media industry exchanges a monetary pittance for OpenAI’s right to scrape and integrate their content into things like ChatGPT. Those that have signed in blood include News Corp (publisher of the Wall Street Journal), the Financial Times, People magazine publisher Dotdash Meredith, the AP, and now, The Atlantic and Vox Media.

The Atlantic and Vox Media quickly confirmed these new deals shortly after Axios first published the news. 

The Atlantic says that it’ll be a “premium news source” in OpenAI and that all its citations will be clearly attributed to The Atlantic with links back to the original content. There are concerns from publishers that users of AI chatbots don’t actually need to go to the original sources; perhaps the calculus is that, for an industry in the twilight of its lifespan, some inbound link traffic is better than none. Then again, by agreeing to be scraped at all, perhaps The Atlantic is effectively wading directly into the tarpit of its own extinction (and of media as a whole). There will also be an experimental “microsite” called Atlantic Labs that’ll showcase “new products and features to better serve its journalism and readers.” 

Vox Media (publisher of its flagship news site Vox, tech site The Verge, the network of sports blogs under the SB Nation banner and many more) says it’ll have a similar style of attribution and linking out to its content. 

Vox Media will also use OpenAI data both internally and in public-facing content. Specifically, it’ll “enhance” Vox’s The Strategist Gift Scout tool that helps visitors find stuff to buy (and helps Vox Media earn affiliate revenue). It’ll also be built into the publisher’s in-house advertising platform, so expect ads that are even better at following you around the internet and learning about what you want to buy.

There’s no indication yet that that either company will publish anything created directly by AI, as sites like CNET and Sports Illustrated have tried with disastrous results, though neither company said anything about keeping AI out of its content either. Over at The Atlantic, it seems likely that any such experiments will be kept to the new Atlantic Labs section, at least for starters.

While a number of publishers have been quick to embrace AI, not everyone is so enthused. The New York Times sued both OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement in December, saying that both companies use its material without permission to train their models. More recently, eight publications owned by the Alden Capital Group, including the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, sued both companies with a similar complaint. At this point, it seems like it’s either spend time and money in a lawsuit to go after OpenAI’s rampant intellectual theft or cut a deal that’ll make you some spending cash in a dire media market. 

It was only last week The Atlantic published its own screed decrying media organizations which had taken petty cash from AI interlopers in exchange for something of significantly greater value. The odds unfortunately suggest this story (and my moral high ground) will age just as poorly in the near future.

Update, May 29, 2024, 12:20 PM ET: This story has been updated to include details from Vox Media’s official statement on the deal.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-atlantic-and-vox-media-made-their-own-deal-with-the-ai-devil-161017636.html?src=rss

Sony promised earlier this year that it would free the PlayStation VR2 from the shackles of the PS5 by letting folks use it with their PC. We’re starting to get a fuller picture of what that might look like, as the company appears to be working on a PC adapter for the headset.

A Korean filing recently unearthed by VR and mixed-reality enthusiast Brad Lynch (as noted by The Verge) indicates that the company has created such a peripheral. There are no details on how the adapter works, what it looks like or how much it will cost, but it lends credence to previous evidence that the headset would have a wired PC connection.

It’s unclear what kind of connectivity Sony is looking at here. Unlike its convoluted predecessor, PS VR2 hooks up to the PS5 with a single USB-C cable. Meta Quest headsets, meanwhile, use a USB 3 connection for PC gaming. Perhaps Sony is looking at tapping into DisplayPort or HDMI ports to improve image fidelity.

The company will be hoping that PC support will help drive sales of its headset, which hasn’t exactly set the world alight. The PS VR2 hardware is actually pretty great, but it’s been held back by several factors, including a limited library of games via PS5. Users will have a far larger selection of VR games to dive into on PC.

As it happens, the PS VR2 is currently $100 off as part of Sony’s Days of Play sale. The discount applies to both the standalone headset (down from $550 to $450) and the Horizon: Call of the Mountain bundle, which has dropped to $500.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sony-is-working-on-a-pc-adapter-for-the-playstation-vr2-151529342.html?src=rss

Meta caught an Israeli marketing firm using fake Facebook accounts to run an influence campaign on its platform, the company said in its latest report on coordinated inauthentic behavior. The scheme targeted people in the US and Canada and posted about the Israel-Hamas war.

In all, Meta’s researchers uncovered 510 Facebook accounts, 11 pages, 32 Instagram accounts and one group that were tied to the effort, including fake and previously hacked accounts. The accounts posed as “Jewish students, African Americans and ‘concerned’ citizens” and shared posts that praised Israel’s military actions and criticized the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and college protests. They also shared Islamaophobic comments in Canada, saying that “radical Islam poses a threat to liberal values in Canada.”

Meta’s researchers said the campaign was linked to STOIC, a “a political marketing and business intelligence firm” based in Israel, though they didn’t speculate on the motives behind it. STOIC was also active on X and YouTube and ran websites “focused on the Israel-Hamas war and Middle Eastern politics.”

According to Meta, the campaign was discovered before it could build up a large audience and many of the fake accounts were disabled by the company’s automated systems. The accounts reached about 500 followers on Facebook and about 2,000 on Instagram.

The report also notes that the people behind the accounts seemed to use generative AI tools to write many of their comments on the pages of politicians, media organizations and other public figures.“These comments generally linked to the operations’ websites, but they were often met with critical responses from authentic users calling them propaganda,” Meta’s policy director for threat disruption, David Agranovich, said during a briefing with reporters “So far, we have not seen novel Gen AI driven tactics that would impede our ability to disrupt the adversarial networks behind them.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-caught-an-israeli-marketing-firm-running-hundreds-of-fake-facebook-accounts-150021954.html?src=rss