Month: September 2023

Enlarge / A new, FIFA-less era begins for EA Sports. (credit: EA)

EA has suddenly removed downloadable versions of FIFA 23 from multiple digital storefronts. The delisting comes earlier than expected for the title and coincides with the company's launch of the newly FIFA-license-free EA Sports FC 24.

While many reports suggest there has been a recent mass purge of all legacy FIFA games from online stores, EA has a history of delisting older sports titles at a pretty regular cadence. FIFA 22, for instance, was delisted from digital storefronts in May, roughly seven months after the launch of the subsequent FIFA 23. And FIFA 21 wasn't taken down from Steam until June 2022, about eight months after FIFA 22's launch.

FIFA 23, on the other hand, has been delisted less than a year from its October 2022 launch. SteamDB tracking data suggests that the delisting came on September 21, the day before the new EA Sports FC became available for a 10-hour early access trial for EA Play members. The Steam store page for FIFA 23 now notes that the delisting comes "at the request of the publisher" and that the game "will not appear in search." The game also no longer appears on Steam's EA publisher page.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

On Monday, Spotify rolled out a limited pilot program that uses AI to automatically translate podcasts into various languages, using voice synthesis technology from OpenAI to preserve the original speaker's voice. The feature aims to offer a more authentic listening experience compared to traditional dubbing. It could also introduce language errors that are difficult for non-native speakers to detect, since machine translation is far from a perfect technology.

In its press release announcing the program, Spotify says it is a platform that allows creators to share their work around the world. Then it asks a question: "With recent advancements, we’ve been wondering: Are there more ways we can bridge the language gap so that these voices can be heard worldwide?"

Spotify's answer is Voice Translation, which can reportedly translate English voices into Spanish, French, and German while retaining the distinctive vocal characteristics of the speaker. The feature is currently being used with only select podcasters, such as Dax Shepard, Monica Padman, Lex Fridman, Bill Simmons, and Steven Bartlett.

Enlarge / Histoplasma capsulatum is a species of parasitic, yeast-like dimorphic fungus that can, if inhaled, cause a type of lung infection called histoplasmosis. (credit: Nanoclustering/Science Photo Library)

Back at the turn of the 21st century, Valley fever was an obscure fungal disease in the United States, with fewer than 3,000 reported cases per year, mostly in California and Arizona. Two decades later, cases of Valley fever are exploding, increasing more than sevenfold and expanding to other states.

And Valley fever isn’t alone. Fungal diseases in general are appearing in places they have never been seen before, and previously harmless or mildly harmful fungi are turning deadly for people. One likely reason for this worsening fungal situation, scientists say, is climate change. Shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns are expanding where disease-causing fungi occur; climate-triggered calamities can help fungi disperse and reach more people; and warmer temperatures create opportunities for fungi to evolve into more dangerous agents of disease.

For a long time, fungi have been a neglected group of pathogens. By the early 2000s, researchers were already warning that climate change would make bacterial and viral infectious diseases like cholera and dengue more widespread. “But people were not focused at all on the fungi,” says Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist and immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That’s because, until recently, fungi haven’t troubled humans much.