Month: February 2023

Enlarge / The overall color and design scheme means there's no mistaking that this is a PlayStation 5 accessory.

Consumer-grade virtual reality was still in its infancy in 2016 when Sony decided it should be on the leading edge of the charge. The first PlayStation VR headset sold relatively well compared to its early PC VR competition and quite well compared to other console accessories. But over the last six years, Sony has largely let its first console VR experiment wither on the vine, allowing competitors to advance the state of the art with frequent hardware and software updates.

Now that we're firmly in the PS5 era, Sony is back to prove it hasn't completely forgotten about its virtual reality market. The PlayStation VR2 headset shows all the refinements you'd expect from years of technological advancement and throws in a few nice features that aren't standard among the competition, to boot. Despite those improvements, though, the PSVR2 still feels like a by-the-numbers, too-little-too-late attempt by Sony to keep its foot in a niche it might not be fully committed to.

Ready, get set…

Anyone else getting American Horror Story vibes from this front view?

The PSVR2 does away with the ludicrous mess of wires, junction boxes, power plugs, and cameras that came to define the original PSVR. As we discussed in our unboxing impressions, the newer headset features a single USB-C cable that plugs directly into the front of a PS5. That means you're not left with a clutter of equipment by your entertainment center if you leave the headset plugged in, and it's not a major hassle to get connected if you want to put the PSVR2 back in the box between sessions.

Enlarge (credit: QuEra)

Quantum computing has entered a bit of an awkward period. There have been clear demonstrations that we can successfully run quantum algorithms, but the qubit counts and error rates of existing hardware mean that we can't solve any commercially useful problems at the moment. So, while many companies are interested in quantum computing and have developed software for existing hardware (and have paid for access to that hardware), the efforts have been focused on preparation. They want the expertise and capability needed to develop useful software once the computers are ready to run it.

For the moment, that leaves them waiting for hardware companies to produce sufficiently robust machines—machines that don't currently have a clear delivery date. It could be years; it could be decades. Beyond learning how to develop quantum computing software, there's nothing obvious to do with the hardware in the meantime.

But a company called QuEra may have found a way to do something that's not as obvious. The technology it is developing could ultimately provide a route to quantum computing. But until then, it's possible to solve a class of mathematical problems on the same hardware, and any improvements to that hardware will benefit both types of computation. And in a new paper, the company's researchers have expanded the types of computations that can be run on their machine.

Enlarge / This photo taken on March 30, 2018, shows a Thai teenager trying out a traditional coffin at the Kid Mai Death Awareness Cafe, an exhibition space built to educate the public about death and Buddhism, in Bangkok. (credit: LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA/AFP via Getty Images)

An 82-year-old woman who was recently pronounced dead at a New York nursing home was later discovered to be alive by funeral home staff. This follows a similar incident in Iowa where a 66-year-old woman with early-onset dementia was declared dead by a nurse, only to be found gasping for air when funeral home staff unzipped the body bag.

Fortunately, these events are very rare. But fear of them is visceral, which might explain an old naval custom. When sewing the canvas shroud for a dead sailor, the sailmaker would take the last stitch through the nose of the deceased. Having a sailcloth needle through the nose was presumed to be a potent enough stimulus to wake any sailor who was actually still alive.

Confirmation of death these days is thankfully a lot less brutal.