AI-powered cars are, in a strange way, here and not here. The technology works—millions of miles have been traversed by true self-driving vehicles in the past decade—and it shows up in places like Tesla. Most of us don’t realize just how close AI is to becoming the future of driving. But there’s one problem: cost.

The price of AI modeling software and hardware, as well as the problem of implementation, make mainstream adoption move much slower than some of us would want. Although most of us think of AI-powered cars as using massive computers inside relatively complex vehicles, that’s not always the case. In fact, you need very little computing power to run much of the software that has the capacity to change the way we get from point A to point B.

Where’s my self-driving car?

Cars that are advertised as self-driving aren’t quite completely AI-driven. In fact, most self-driving features are tricks—dumb systems the car uses to keep us going straight and between the yellow lines.

Creating real autonomous driving requires our cars to work in L4 mode. The Society of Automotive Engineers created a six-point system (on a scale from zero to five) that describes how autonomous a vehicle really is. Most cars are L2 or “partial driving” automation. The car can control steering and acceleration/deceleration, but a human still must be in control of the car.

L4 or “high automation” cars can drive in almost any circumstances and most don’t require any human interaction. They are also geofenced, which means they can probably drive flawlessly around town but might get wonky when they head out into the country.

To achieve L4, you need to be able to create a detailed map of your environment using image segmentation and facilitate real-time response. Real-time response is absolutely essential because it allows the car to simultaneously follow a preset path—such as from your home to the store—while watching out for unexpected things like errant turns and road hazards.

By connecting an inexpensive computing module and a software AI model, you can begin to connect the real world together in a way that allows the car to drive without operator interaction. The cost of hardware is actually going down as we speak, and the software allows simple, off-the-shelf computers to gain autonomous driving powers.

How are you doing, driver?

These same AI-powered devices can make things safer for the human driver. Many dash cams are able to film the inside of the car, and by connecting a dash cam to your vehicle, your car will “know” when you’re distracted or tired. Using cheap cameras, processors and a powerful AI software model, you can turn an inexpensive gadget into a lifesaver and even embed the hardware into your car itself. This would be an essential safety measure for ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft that manage thousands of drivers on the roads at all hours of the day and night.

What’s next? Imagine a car that can tell you that you’re tired and that it will take over for a while, waking you when it reaches a certain point. Or imagine a sensor that can warn you—and other drivers—when you’re nervous or stressed (or, worse, drunk) and react accordingly. Again, AI plus cheap hardware can make all the difference.

You can have it in any color you want (as long as it’s black or white).

AI isn’t limited to driving. New systems that run AI in the cloud can allow you to configure your vehicle quickly and easily and even send the selected configurations to the factory where they are processed and built. The problem is that current solutions don’t operate on mobile devices and require accurate models to recognize and segment the parts.

Again, powerful software on mobile phones and other commodity hardware is pushing the envelope on how we interact with car manufacturers. These AI systems may not seem like they’re part of your smart car, but they’re definitely part of the smart car buying experience.

‘KITT, where are you?’

Once the AI knows your driving style, your habits and even what you like, why not use AI to let the car tell you about itself? By pairing an AI model with a cellphone, you can “show” your phone the car’s dashboard, and the car can respond by telling you about the various features it has to offer. This is a wild departure from the traditional “manual in a glove box,” made possible by AI on the edge of the network.

Cars, and the way we buy and use them, are getting smarter every day. Self-driving is just one step on a long road to the digital transformation of the car industry, and you can expect AI to lead the charge. What happens when everything about the automotive experience is AI-powered? That’s when we begin really living in the future.

Source

MDN Plus extends the development resource that Mozilla maintains, without taking away features from free users.  Web developers may access the main MDN website to access documentation on web technologies such as CSS, HTML or JavaScript.

MDN Plus is a premium subscription service launched in March 2022 by Mozilla. The service allows users to customize their MDN Web Docs experience through premium features such as Notifications, Collections and MDN Offline.

MDN Plus introduces two paid tiers and a basic tier that developers may subscribe to. These tiers extend the core functionality of MDN. The following three plans have been created:

• MDN Core -- The basic option gives limited access to the premium features.
• MDN Plus 5 -- Adds access to notifications, collections and offline use of MDN.
• MDN Supporter 10 -- Gets every feature of MDN Plus and a direct feedback channel to the MDN team.

MDN Plus is available for $5 per month or $50 per year, MDN Supporter 10 for $10 per month or $100 per year.

For now, paid plans are only available in the United States and Canada. Mozilla plans to expand the availability of the subscriptions to the following countries in the coming months (and others, that Mozilla did not mention): France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.

The three main features of the MDN Plus plan:

• Notifications -- Subscribers may follow pages on MDN to receive notifications when content changes; this helps them stay up to date on technologies and topics.
• Collections -- The option to save pages on desktop and mobile, and to gain access to automatic collections based on viewed articles. Collections may be filtered and sorted.
• Offline Access -- A Progressive Web Application that gives subscribers access to MDN content while they are offline. May also improve the performance as content may load faster when it is available offline.

Feedback and research done in 2020 and 2021 indicated that MDN users were interested in additional features. The three main features of MDN Plus reflect the feedback according to Mozilla.

Mozilla plans to reinvest some of the subscription money into improvement the MDN Web documentation. All users, free or commercial, will benefit from this.

Closing words

MDN Plus is completely optional and all existing content remains accessible freely. Mozilla will reinvest some of the earned revenue into the site and the service. Revenue from subscription-based services increases year-over-year. The last revenue report, for the year 2020, shows an increase by $10 million from $14 million in 2019 to $24 million in 2020. Several products that Mozilla launched were not available in all regions at the time, and the 2021 revenue report will likely see another increase in revenue.

Services such as Mozilla VPN or Firefox Relay Premium contribute a small percentage to Mozilla's overall revenue, which still comes to a very large percentage from search engine deals.

Now You: are subscription-based products the right way to diversify Mozilla's income?

Source: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/25/mozilla-launches-mdn-plus-service-in-some-regions/

Gigabyte has announced the launch of its latest 2022 BRIX Extreme mini-PC series which comes with support for the new 12th Gen Intel Core Mobile Processors. The 2022 BRIX Extreme framework incorporates four display outputs that include HDMI 2.1, USB4, 2.5G Ethernet, and the latest WiFi 6E configuration.

The new computer has two versions including a tall version and a slim version. The tall version allows for additional storage capacity that enables users to install a 2.5" SSD/HDD. In addition, the latest upgrade kit comes with an I/O expander to incorporate a second LAN connection, a RS232 communication port, and a M.2 2280 slot. It also supports full 8K media support through the HDMI 2.1 port.

Moreover, it features an integrated TPM module and can offer hardware-level security and system safety by avoiding data leaks from decryption. The company's BRIX Extreme with a 12th Gen Intel Core Mobile processor delivers a 10 percent improvement on graphics performance compared to the previous generation, boosted by the new Intel Iris graphics core. Furthermore, it natively supports four 4K/60P display outputs via 2 x HDMI, 1 x USB-C DisplayPort, and 1 x mini-DP.

For optimal image quality, BRIX offers up to 8K resolution for your display, with the latest HDMI 2.1 standards. Commenting on its sound level, the company mentioned that, "when testing in the GIGABYTE Sound Lab, this all new 2022 BRIX ran at an almost undetectable sound level below 20dB, and that low noise level is maintained even when running heavy workloads where the sound level is still under 30dB. Moreover, when bleeding edge performance is needed, the 12th Gen Intel® Core™ Mobile processor enables boost mode with a TDP up to 45W, and still the noise level tops out at 35dB."

The BRIX Extreme mini-PC will be available in Q2 2022. For more information, head over to the dedicated webpage here.

Gigabyte's "most powerful mini pc in the world" arrives, offers tall and slim versions

Google announced Wednesday it’s making some improvements to how it decides which product reviews it shows in Search results. The idea behind these and other recent product reviews updates is to ensure that reviews you see are high quality and actually include helpful information about a product you might be considering buying.

The improvements build on earlier updates “to make sure that product reviews in Search meet certain criteria,” Google’s Perry Liu said in a blog post. Here are some examples of the criteria Liu says the company is looking for:

Include helpful in-depth details, like the benefits or drawbacks of a certain item, specifics on how a product performs or how the product differs from previous versions

Come from people who have actually used the products, and show what the product is physically like or how it’s used

Include unique information beyond what the manufacturer provides — like visuals, audio or links to other content detailing the reviewer’s experience

Cover comparable products, or explain what sets a product apart from its competitors

The updates announced Wednesday will roll out “over the next few weeks” and “may impact the rankings of English-language product reviews across many sites,” Google said in a separate post. The company also plans to “open up product review support for more languages” in the future.

The updates arrive amidst some criticism that Google’s search results aren’t quite as useful as they used to be. We’ll have to wait and see if these product review changes make it easier to find quality reviews, but they seem like they could be a small step in the right direction.

Google changes how it decides which product reviews come up in Search

Wolfenstein 3D secrets revealed by John Romero in lengthy post-mortem chat

The tool, described in The Lancet Digital Health, accurately predicted which patients would experience a heart attack in five years based on the amount and composition of plaque in arteries that supply blood to the heart.

Plaque buildup can cause arteries to narrow, which makes it difficult for blood to get to the heart, increasing the likelihood of a heart attack. A medical test called a coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) takes 3-D images of the heart and arteries and can give doctors an estimate of how much a patient's arteries have narrowed. Until now, however, there has not been a simple, automated and rapid way to measure the plaque visible in the CTA images.

"Coronary plaque is often not measured because there is not a fully automated way to do it," said Damini Dey, Ph.D., director of the quantitative image analysis lab in the Biomedical Imaging Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai and senior author of the study. "When it is measured, it takes an expert at least 25 to 30 minutes, but now we can use this program to quantify plaque from CTA images in five to six seconds." 

Dey and colleagues analyzed CTA images from 1,196 people who underwent a coronary CTA at 11 sites in Australia, Germany, Japan, Scotland and the United States. The investigators trained the AI algorithm to measure plaque by having it learn from coronary CTA images, from 921 people, that already had been analyzed by trained doctors.

The algorithm works by first outlining the coronary arteries in 3-D images, then identifying the blood and plaque deposits within the coronary arteries. Investigators found the tool's measurements corresponded with plaque amounts seen in coronary CTAs. They also matched results with images taken by two invasive tests considered to be highly accurate in assessing coronary artery plaque and narrowing: intravascular ultrasound and catheter-based coronary angiography.

Finally, the investigators discovered that measurements made by the AI algorithm from CTA images accurately predicted heart attack risk within five years for 1,611 people who were part of a multicenter trial called the SCOT-HEART trial.

"More studies are needed, but it's possible we may be able to predict if and how soon a person is likely to have a heart attack based on the amount and composition of the plaque imaged with this standard test," said Dey, who is also professor of Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai.

Dey and colleagues are continuing to study how well their AI algorithm quantifies plaque deposits in patients who undergo coronary CTA.

Source

A pre-release beta version of HWiNFO, a highly popular computer hardware information tool, contains names of as-yet-unreleased and unconfirmed NVIDIA GPUs. In the release notes, HWiNFO lists some Ada Lovelace GPUs such as AD102, AD103, AD104, AD106, and AD107. These five GPUs could form the foundation of the RTX 40-series of graphics cards. However, there’s no way to confirm the naming scheme or the actual technical specifications.

Incidentally, the names mentioned in the HWiNFO release notes match those that surfaced after the infamous Lapsus$ hackers leaked confidential NVIDIA data. Hence, it is not clear if the HWiNFO tool can actually detect and report these GPUs. It is quite possible that the makers of the popular PC system information tool have merely added these names as placeholders, and intend to add support in the near future.

The Ada Lovelace GPUs are NVIDIA’s way of honoring the 19th-century mathematician and writer, known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical, general-purpose computer. She is considered the world’s first computer programmer.

As the naming scheme suggests, the flagship model belonging to the Ada Lovelace GPU family would be the AD102, which could go in the GeForce RTX 4090, and likely RTX 4080, along with potential Ti variants that would arrive sometime later. The AD103, AD104, AD106, and AD107 would go in RTX 4070, 4060, and 4050 class of graphics cards respectively.

Via: Tom's Hardware

Next-gen NVIDIA ‘Ada Lovelace' GeForce RTX 40-series cards sneak into beta version of HWiNFO

Smart glasses come in many different flavors. There's the augmented reality kind, which can overlay helpful information on the real world, the type that acts as a Bluetooth speaker but on your head, and even glasses that work as a head-strapped camera to capture moments of your day.

Then there's the kind that work as a wearable display—with their tiny screens embedded into the sides of each lens so you can view multiple virtual screens to watch movies, work, or play games—all without needing to hold a smartphone up to your face. Most wearable displays, like Lenovo's ThinkReality A3, need to be tethered to a mobile device or laptop for power and processing so the glasses aren't weighted down by chips and batteries. 

But that's what's interesting about Nimo, new glasses from a company called Nimo Planet. These smart specs forgo the need for a wired connection while remaining relatively light. Instead, they utilize Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR1 processor, turning them into something like a mini-computer that sits on your head.

Nimo Planet wants its glasses to replace your laptop when you're on the go. Instead of lugging around your 3-pound machine, you'd just grab your Nimo, a slim Bluetooth keyboard, and a mouse (or maybe something like this). Don the glasses at the airport or coffee shop, and the dual displays on the edge of each lens will serve up to six virtual screens so you can continue typing away.

Or so the company says. Nimo Planet has been working on these glasses for more than four years, with a core team of 10 people based out of Kerala, India. After burning through a mere $300,000 during development in that time, the company is finally launching an Enterprise and a Developer program, where third-party developers can get early access to dev kits, and enterprise customers can reserve units. The company expects the glasses to ship in the first half of 2023, and folks in select cities in India and the US will be able to buy Nimo for a cool $799.

What makes Nimo feel promising is its focused approach. It's not trying to do everything. There are no augmented reality mechanics. There's no camera for you to take pictures with. There aren't any speakers either—you'll need to pair your own Bluetooth earbuds to the glasses. And these glasses aren't designed to handle intensive tasks like Photoshop, just lower-lift apps for word processing and project management.

“We want to make the hardware as simple as possible and make sure the multiscreen productivity works great," says Rohildev Nattukallingal, Nimo Planet's founder and CEO. "Everything else is secondary for us. That's why we don't have a camera, speaker, depth sensors—all the big companies are focusing to build the next mixed reality world, but our approach is more about how we can help someone work anywhere without compromising productivity.” 

Nattukallingal says potential customers he's spoken to are interested in implementing mixed reality glasses for employees who need to work while traveling. The first perk? No one can peer over your shoulder and see what's on your screen—important if you're handling delicate contracts. (Lenovo also touts this as a boon of the ThinkReality A3, its tethered smart glasses system.)

Second, companies know that employees are more efficient when they have multiple monitors to work with, but it's hard to replicate that experience outside of the home or office. Six virtual screens can, hopefully, help with that—especially when the whole package is lighter than a laptop and its bulky charger. Nattukallingal says the current prototype of Nimo weighs 120 grams, 10 grams lighter than the ThinkReality A3, but he expects to shave off around 30 grams before launch.

In a demo over Zoom, Nattukallingal showed off the ease of multitasking on Nimo. By right-clicking on a wireless mouse, the user can drag any app to wherever it's needed. Nattukallingal pulled up Microsoft Word next to PowerPoint and put Slack to the far left. As he showed me, you can just turn your head to look at one of the six virtual screens at any moment. Up top, you can place widgets like your calendar. Below, you can find and toggle settings like Wi-Fi. 

Apps are what will make or break glasses such as these. Nattukallingal says because Nimo OS is based on a forked version of Android, it does not have the certification to run the Google Play Store. That said, many Android apps will work just fine downloaded through open source app stores, including the aforementioned Microsoft apps. Some, like Google Workspace apps, are tightly ingrained with Google Play Services and are incompatible with Nimo, but that's where you'll end up using the web app instead.  

“The OS manages the native Android apps to run on multiple screens and splits the apps into multiple windows,” Nattukallingal says. “Developers don't need to make any changes to support Nimo OS. In the future, we will have [a software development kit] for developers to create enhanced apps for Nimo.”

Nimo pairs to a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The temple pieces also allow touch input, and you can use the screen of a paired smartphone as a trackpad.

Photograph: Nimo Planet

Nimo looks better than most smart glasses, but its arms are still chunky. A cursory second glance is all anyone will need to confirm that you're obviously not wearing normal glasses. The arms do support touch input though, so if you don't have a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse paired, you can use your gaze to look at items and tap the arm to select them. 

Naturally, the keyboard and mouse will be the primary input mechanism for Nimo, but the company says it has filed a patent for a new type of input device that would replace them (this is a few years away). Alternatively, you can use your phone as a trackpad. Speaking of which, since Nimo has no 5G or LTE connectivity, you'll need to hook it up to Wi-Fi or tether it to your phone to receive and send data. 

As for the dual 720p displays, they might look small, but what you see is the virtual equivalent of a 45- to 50-inch screen. The whole system will last around two and a half hours on a single charge, but Nattukallingal thinks this can improve as the company works with new battery vendors and further optimizes the hardware and software. The glasses will come with a carrying case that doubles as a charging station with a built-in battery, much like a wireless earbud case. And if you're wondering about prescriptions, you won't be able to get those done through the company. You'll need to head to an optometrist and have them insert your prescription lenses into the frame.

It all sounds promising, but whether Nimo Planet can deliver a product that works as advertised is a different question. The company doesn't have the best track record—many of its team members used to work at Fin Robotics, the company behind the Neyya ring, which enabled wearers to use gestures to control various devices. (Nattukallingal was a cofounder and former CEO there.) The Neyya didn't end up shipping to every backer of its crowdfunding campaign, and Nattukallingal blamed internal turmoil and untrustworthy advisors for the missteps.

Harmeet Singh Walia, an analyst at CounterPoint Research, is also skeptical about Nimo Planet's claims. While Nimo hits some of the points Walia notes, like how the glasses would need to have computational power at least equivalent to an iPad, weigh less than 100 grams, feature batteries that last several hours, and be priced affordably to really take off, Walia expects all of “this to be a highly unlikely possibility within the first half of this decade.”

Nattukallingal says there are more than 2,000 people on Nimo's waiting list, and the company might consider a crowdfunding campaign once the final design is complete and the product is ready for manufacture. We'll have to wait to see if it can succeed where Neyya failed. 

These Smart Glasses Want to Replace Your Laptop

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Based on the book series written by Andrzej Sapkowski, CD Projekt RED's original The Witcher RPG released in 2007, with The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings following it in 2011. Easily the most popular game in the series, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, arrived in 2015. While a spin-off game, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, released in 2018, the studio has kept the series in the backburner (focusing on Cyberpunk 2077 and Gwent) since the trilogy's ending.

While no details regarding the game's setting were revealed today, the attached teaser image shows a medallion that's distinctly different from Geralt of Rivia's own one from the Wolf School. It's clear a new protagonist is incoming to begin this "new saga".

Interestingly, CD Projekt RED is leaving behind REDengine that has powered its RPGs till now to take up Unreal Engine 5. The studio will be receiving help from Epic Games in this endeavor, with it "beginning a multi-year strategic partnership" with the company.

"It covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant," added the studio. "We’ll closely collaborate with Epic Games’ developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences."

While this may sound like the future of The Witcher on PC will be Epic Games Store exclusive, the studio confirmed it is a technology partnership only and won't affect availability on other storefronts. The studio had no information on release windows, platforms, or current development status of the project either, so we may have to wait quite a while for more news to materialize.

CD Projekt RED is also developing an upgraded version of the game in partnership with Saber Interactive. Coming to PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5, this new version will carry upgraded graphics and other enhanced elements. Current owners of the game will receive it as a free upgrade too.

CD Projekt RED confirms a new Witcher game is in development

In total there are four SKUs that pack the new 3D V-cache. The full lineup alongside key specs and prices are given below (click on image to enlarge):

AMD first introduced the world to 3D V-Cache back at Computex 2021 and recently the firm shared the release date of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D desktop CPU that's launching soon. The 5800X3D however only has a fraction of the total L3 cache compared to the amount available at the disposal of the new EPYC 7003X CPUs announced today. That's because even the 16 core EPYC chips here comprise the full eight Core Complex Dies (CCDs) instead of the single CCD on the 5800X3D. This also shows the excellent nature of scalability of the 3D V-Cache.

You can find the official announcement here.

AMD's 3rd Gen 64 core EPYC "Milan-X" packs an insane 804MB of cache thanks to 3D V-Cache

Folder naming in Windows 11 Start menu

Just yesterday, Microsoft rolled out Windows 11 Dev Channel build 22579. It features tons of new capabilities including more USB encryption policies, the ability to name folders in Start menu, pinned site suggestions in the Get Started app, and lots of other things. That said, there are a bunch of known issues as well and you can check them out here.

If your preferred upgrade path is via ISOs, you'll be happy to know that Microsoft has made those available for this build too.

Microsoft also released Windows 11 build 22000.588 (KB5011563) to the Beta Channel. It contains lots of bug fixes, but perhaps more importantly for some consumers, it rolls up the "System requirements not met" warning watermark too. Microsoft has also resolved a Windows 11 upgrade block for VirtualBox after collaborating with Oracle, and you can check out the details here.

Gamers will be pleased to know that DirectStorage is now available on Windows 11, with Microsoft emphasizing that this makes the OS the best platform for gaming. Moving forward, there's also a chance that Windows 11 adoption picks up pace in the enterprise space, as a recent study has revealed that lots of work PCs are now Windows 11-ready.

That said, Microsoft didn't ignore Windows 10 in this week either. Insiders on the Release Preview Channel received build 19044.1618 (KB5011543), with the most notable feature being Search highlights.

There's a new Windows Server release out too with build 25075. It packs many security enhancements which make brute-force attacks challenging for malicious actors too.

While we are on the topic of updates, Microsoft's Surface Duo 2 and Surface Pro X have received their respective March 2022 firmware updates.

End of the line for Internet Explorer... almost

With Internet Explorer retiring in June 2022, Microsoft has once again issued a reminder that its users should migrate to Edge. What's more interesting this time around is that the company has also detailed the end of support timelines for IE mode, which is basically used to run legacy applications via the MSHTML (Trident) engine. Dates range from this year up to 2029, so if you're an IE customer, you should probably check out these details here.

Talking about browsers, Edge 100 hit the Beta Channel with some new capabilities, including a lightweight PDF preview utility, synchronization of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) across all your desktop devices, and an enhanced Cloud Site List Management experience for IE Mode.

In fact, if you're a Valve Steam Deck owner and an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, you might want to download the Edge beta on your handheld as Xbox Cloud Gaming is now possible through it. That said, since this is possible only via Edge beta for now, do not expect the experience to be perfect.

Finally, you might also want to update Chrome and Edge to version 99.0.4844.74 and 99.0.1150.46, respectively. These fix a lot of security vulnerabilities present in the underlying Chromium engine.

Ads in File Explorer

Not a real screenshot

Microsoft caused an uproar this week after rare instances of ads in File Explorer were spotted by some Insiders. These included "thin" banners which urged people to try out Microsoft Editor. Obviously, people were not too happy about it, as can be seen by the general sentiment of our comments section here.

The company then rushed out with an explanation claiming that the ad was an "experimental banner that was not intended to be published externally and was turned off".

That said, the statement is slightly concerning though, because Microsoft doesn't completely rule out the possibility of ads being shown in generally available (GA) versions of File Explorer in the future. They were published by accident this time, but there's no knowing if they will be intentionally published a few weeks or months from now.

Microsoft also made another gaffe after its own Defender service flagged Office updates as malware. The company fixed this issue quickly and then published some details about how security operators can avoid false positives like these in the future.

At least on the Windows 11 front, Microsoft is looking for some feedback to polish and fix Windows 11 - and hopefully avoid problems like these in the future -, do check out those details here. And if you have some Microsoft Store apps that you love to use, you can nominate them too.

Dev Channel

• You can now call Ukrainian mobile and landline phone numbers for free using Skype
• Paramount's Halo show has another trailer
• Xbox Cloud Gaming is now more performant on iOS
• Weird West, Shredders, F1 2021, and more are are hitting Xbox Game Pass this month
• Visual Studio 2022 version 17.0 Preview 7 for Mac is now out with improved Xamarin support
• Microsoft has announced the AI-powered Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera, and it only costs $800
• The ability to virtualize Linux and Android is coming soon to select Windows 365 license types
• The Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) is being reorganized with an increased emphasis on "Cloud"
• The U.S. Army apparently isn't too happy with Microsoft HoloLens
• There's a new Surface Go 3 variant with LTE for $499

Under the spotlight

Neowin News Reporter Taras Buria published a detailed guide about how you can install Google Play Store on Windows 11. Although Microsoft's implementation of Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) doesn't include Google Play services by default, you can follow Taras' guide here to enable it on your machine.

If you don't like certain inbox apps included in Windows 11 by default, such as Cortana, Windows Camera, and Windows Maps, among others, Taras also published a guide about how you can uninstall these "non-removable" apps.

Finally, I sifted through Microsoft's feedback portal and compiled a list of the top 10 features people want from Outlook across different platforms. While the list is certainly interesting, it's a bit disappointing to see a lack of responsiveness from Microsoft on most feedback items. Check out the list here.

Logging off

The crown for this week's most interesting news item undoubtedly goes to this piece where we have UK's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Nadine Dorries reportedly asking Microsoft representatives about when they are going to "get rid of the algorithms". Unfortunately, we don't know how the Microsoft officials responded to the question, but apparently, Dorries was referring to social media algorithms which determine what content is being shown to users. That said, it appears that she is unaware that Microsoft does not own social media platforms, and we doubt that she was referring to LinkedIn when she asked that question.

Microsoft Weekly: File Explorer ads, end of the line for IE, and folder naming in Start menu

AMD has also made old socket AM4 customers happy by announcing support for Ryzen 5000 series, including the new chips, on 1st gen 300-series chipset motherboards. The company was already contemplating on that for a while and it's possible that the Alder Lake pressure swayed AMD to do it, despite perhaps a few challenges.

However, there was still confusion regarding the support as accompanying announcements from Gigabyte and Asus had no mention of support for the popular B350 chipset. Andreas Schilling from Hardwareluxx reached out to Asus regarding the matter and the company has responded seemingly confirming that support for B350 is also coming at the same time as X370 and A320.

However, Asus has still not given the green light for the Ryzen 5 5500 SKU as the model is held back by a BIOS code limitation put in place by AMD itself.

B350 users can breathe a sigh of relief as Asus seemingly confirms Ryzen 5000 support

AMD announces FSR upscaling 2.0, promises big, hardware-agnostic gains

Psychedelics are psychotropic drugs: substances that affect your mental state. Other types of psychotropics include antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. Psychedelics and other types of hallucinogens, however, are unique in their ability to temporarily induce intense hallucinations, emotions and disruptions of self-awareness.

Researchers looking into the therapeutic potential of these effects have found that psychedelics can dramatically reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, PTSD, substance abuse and other psychiatric conditions. The intense experiences, or "trips," that psychedelics induce are thought to create a temporary window of cognitive flexibility that allows patients to gain access to elusive parts of their psyches and forge better coping skills and thought patterns.

Precisely how psychedelics create these effects, however, is still unclear. So as researchers in psychiatry and machine learning, we were interested in figuring out how these drugs affect the brain. With artificial intelligence, we were able to map people's subjective experiences while using psychedelics to specific regions of the brain, down to the molecular level.

Mapping 'trips' in the brain

Every psychedelic functions differently in the body, and each of the subjective experiences these drugs create have different therapeutic effects. Mystical type experiences, or feelings of unity and oneness with the world, for example, are associated with decreases in depression and anxiety. Knowing how each psychedelic creates these specific effects in the body can help clinicians optimize their therapeutic use.

Natural language processing, which allows computers to interpret human languages, helped in analyzing subjective psychedelic experiences.

To better understand how these subjective effects manifest in the brain, we analyzed over 6,000 written testimonials of hallucinogenic experiences from Erowid Center, an organization that collects and provides information about psychoactive substances. We transformed these testimonials into what's called a bag-of-words model, which breaks down a given text into individual words and counts how many times each word appears. We then paired the most commonly used words linked to each psychedelic with receptors in the brain that are known to bind to each drug. After using an algorithm to extract the most common subjective experiences associated with these word-receptor pairs, we mapped these experiences onto different brain regions by matching them to the types of receptors present in each area.

We found both new links and patterns that confirm what's known in the research literature. For example, changes in sensory perception were associated with a serotonin receptor in the visual cortex of the brain, which binds to a molecule that helps regulate mood and memory. Feelings of transcendence were connected to dopamine and opioid receptors in the salience network, a collection of brain regions involved in managing sensory and emotional input. Auditory hallucinations were linked to a number of receptors spread throughout the auditory cortex.

Our findings also align with the leading hypothesis that psychedelics temporarily reduce top-down executive function, or cognitive processes involved in inhibition, attention and memory, among others, while amplifying brain regions involved in sensory experience.

Why it matters

The U.S. is going through a profound mental health crisis that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet there have been no truly new psychiatric drug treatments since Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most common type of antidepressants, of the 1980s.

Our study shows that it's possible to map the diverse and wildly subjective psychedelic experiences to specific regions in the brain. These insights may lead to new ways to combine existing or yet to be discovered compounds to produce desired treatment effects for a range of psychiatric conditions.

Pychiatrist Stanislav Grof famously proposed, "[P]sychedelics, used responsibly and with proper caution, would be for psychiatry what the microscope is to the study of biology and medicine or the telescope for astronomy." As psychedelics and other hallucinogens become more commonly used clinically and culturally, we believe more research will further illuminate the biological basis of the experiences they invoke and help realize their potential.

Source

Google buys Micro LED startup Raxium, wants to make AR displays

Google’s big annual developer conference, Google I/O, will take place May 11th and 12th, the company announced Wednesday. The event will once again be fully online, though it sounds like at least some of the conference will be streamed live from the Shoreline Amphitheatre, a frequent Google I/O venue.

“This year’s event will be broadcast in front of a limited live audience, and is completely free and open to everyone virtually,” Google spokesperson Alex Garcia-Kummert said in a statement to The Verge. That limited audience will be comprised primarily of Google employees and some partners, according to a Google statement shared with Axios’ Ina Fried.

Registration will be free and will begin sometime this month, according to an FAQ. There will be no tickets, which seems to mean that everyone who wants to attend will be able to.

Google I/O was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and returned as an online event in 2021. The company made a number of big announcements at last year’s event, including debuting Android 12’s “Material You” design, revealing updates to Google Workspace, and saying that Google’s Wear OS and Samsung’s Tizen would be merging into one platform (now known as Wear OS 3).

We don’t know exactly what’s coming this year, but given that Google has already released the first preview of Android 13, it seems likely that one of the focuses will be that OS.

Update March 16th, 6:08PM ET: Added Google statement and additional context from Axios.

Google I/O takes place May 11th and 12th, and it will be fully available online

Intel announces another megafab as chipmaker expands EU footprint

The new Ryzen 5000 parts are based on Zen 3 architecture and the Ryzen 4000 SKUs are built using Zen 2. There is also a new APU in the mix. Alongside these, AMD also revealed when it will release the Ryzen 7 5800X3D that packs a massive 96MB of L3 cache thanks to its 3D V-cache.

Perhaps even bigger news than this was the official announcement of support for Ryzen 5000, including these newly-released parts, on the first-gen 300 series Socket AM4 motherboards. AMD in its press release confirmed that "Selective BETA BIOS updates" would be rolling out in April. It is rumored to be the same AGESA 1.2.0.7 firmware that also fixes the fTPM stuttering issue.

Since then, Asus has shared the release dates for the compatible firmware. In fact, it is apparently happening earlier than that with the motherboard maker releasing compatible AGESA update on March 25.

While that is certainly exciting, there is no mention of the the popular B350 chipset on this support list. Also, as you may have noticed, support for the Ryzen 5 5500 is crossed on the image above on both X370 and A320 boards. While Asus does not mention any specific reason Gigabyte states that this, at least in the case of A320, is a BIOS Code limitation on AMD's part:

AMD A320 chipset motherboards do not support Ryzen™ 5 5500 processors for now, due to AMD BIOS code limitation.

Interestingly Gigabyte has also added that A320 users can already run all the new CPUs except for the aforementioned Ryzen 5500 model. And once again, there is no mention of B350 on Gigabyte's support list either.

Source: Gigabyte via APN News | Image: VideoCardz

Despite AMD's official announcement, B350 / A320 support for new Ryzen CPUs is iffy, for now

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Microsoft announces progress on a completely new type of qubit

Samsung has recently confirmed to an Indian news portal, Gadgets360 that it will launch six new laptops in India “to disrupt the way consumers are using laptops.”

The new Samsung laptops that will soon enter Indian markets include Galaxy Book Go, Galaxy Book 2, Galaxy Book 2 360, Galaxy Book 2 Business, Galaxy Book 2 Pro, and the Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360. All these new laptops will be powered by Windows 11. Samsung has further confirmed that it’ll launch these new laptops on March 17 in India.

Samsung will sell these laptops through its own website and Amazon India website. To attract customers, the company will give cashback offers and other benefits, according to a report from SamMobile.

Samsung will now compete with Dell, HP, ASUS, Lenovo, and other well-recognized brands. However, Samsung hasn’t confirmed the offline availability of its new laptops. Samsung’s competitors will undoubtedly be at an advantage if the company decides not to make these new laptops available offline.

Samsung fans in India will definitely be happy about the latest development and will love to see their favorite tech brands bringing more products to the country. If Samsung manages to taste the success that it wants in India, the company will surely launch more Windows 11 laptops in India.

Samsung says it’ll launch six new Windows 11 laptops in India on March 17

The Intel "A New Stage of the Game" event page reads:

Join us on March 30th at 8 A.M. pacific time to see Intel® Arc™ graphics take center stage and get a first look at our new discrete graphics for laptops.

It is evident from the event page that Intel would launch Arc for laptops on that day and if we are lucky, the firm could also reveal some more details about desktop Arc that are confirmed to be launching in the next quarter.

So while this is really exciting, you could be thoroughly disappointed if you are looking at Intel's Arc GPUs to immediately take on heavyweights AMD and Nvidia with its first-gen Alchemist A-series GPUs. The company confirmed this itself stating that the third-gen Celestial GPUs will "address the ultra-enthusiast segment".

Although Intel could be down-playing its performance with Arc, it is quite unlikely for a company. Besides, SiSoftware already sort of confirmed this when it took an Arc GPU for an early review noting that the performance of Arc was "nothing special".

Intel's highly anticipated Arc GPUs finally get a release date and its not too far away

According to a report from VideoCardz, AMD is going to introduce FSR 2.0 in three days time on March 17th and the site also shared some of the alleged details about it.

Apparently, FSR 2.0 will be employing temporal upscaling instead of spatial upscaling on FSR 1.0. If you are wondering what the big deal is, AMD is apparently promising image quality better than native using the temporal approach.

An alleged performance comparison figure is also out which shows FSR 2.0 in the Performance mode delivering near double the frames compared to native rendering.

Of course, the per game implementation of FSR will still remain though, AMD is also purportedly releasing its Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) on the same day as FSR 2.0. The great thing about RSR is that it does not require per game implementation although it has its own minor caveat, but its only supported on RDNA-based cards, ie, Radeon RX 5000 and Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs. AMD will likely discuss details about FSR 2.0 and possibly even RSR at the upcoming GDC 2022 event.

While we are on the topic, Intel is also introducing its XeSS upscaling technology and despite being based on AI and ML, XeSS, just like FSR is also expected to run on all hardware.

Source and images: VideoCardz via CapFrameX (Twitter)

AMD FSR 2.0 alleged details leak, could finally be a viable replacement for Nvidia DLSS