After roughly a decade, multiple leadership changes and a regular spot in Apple rumor reports, the Apple Car project, internally known as Project Titan, could well be dead. A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says Apple has officially canceled the car, breaking the news to nearly 2,000 employees working on it.
Nothing's drip feed of specs and line drawings gets us to this point. At MWC 2024, the company finally revealed its next phone in the flesh during its MWC soiree. Sadly, it was in a glass box — which seems to be the not-great trend of this year's Mobile World Congress.
Lenovo’s Project Crystal is definitely sci-fi tech come to life. Currently, there are no plans to turn the concept laptop into a retail product. Yet. Instead, its ThinkPad division commissioned an exploration into the potential of transparent microLED panels and, sigh, AI integration.
After complaints that Google’s image generator built into its Gemini AI was (ugh) woke, Google explained why it may have overcorrected for diversity. Prabhakar Raghavan, the company’s senior vice president for knowledge and information, said Google’s efforts to ensure a wide range of people generated in images “failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range.”
Every gram counts in commercial flight. Material scientists from Kobe University have discovered “nanospheres” that are near-invisible silicone crystals. The particles can reflect light thanks to very large and efficient scattering, research published in the ACS Applied Nano Matter journal details.
I’m not sure if there’s a good way to name the second part of a trilogy of games based on an original title that’s the seventh in a series of games. But this one is called Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
In the big Nintendo Direct presentation yesterday, we learned of two of the four Xbox titles Microsoft said would appear on “the other consoles.” One of them is Pentiment, coming to Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5, well, today.
Fujifilm’s X100V was, for some reason, a huge hit on TikTok. This made it hard to buy, despite its tiny form factor and retro Fuji appeal. Fortunately, the company is here to make money offer an improved update, the 40.2-megapixel X100 VI. While keeping the same retro form, it has much faster shooting speeds, in-body stabilization, 6.2K 30p video and more. Video-wise, it can also capture at 4K at 60 fps and 1080p at 240fps.
Nintendo’s Switch 2 (not its official name) was widely expected to arrive sometime this year, but that may not happen. Now, the company is reportedly telling publishers the next-gen console is slated for release in the first quarter of 2025.
If that did happen, it would mimic the release of the original Switch, which was announced in October 2016 and came out in March 2017.
NASA wants volunteers for its second year-long simulated Mars mission, the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA 2). For the mission’s duration, starting spring 2025, the four selected crew members will live in a 1,700-square-foot 3D-printed habitat in Houston. It’s paid, but we don’t know how much. At least living costs will be nil.
The Mars Dune Alpha habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center simulates life for future explorers on the red planet, where the environment is harsh and resources limited.