Month: December 2023

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

Windows 10's end-of-support date is October 14, 2025. That's the day that most Windows 10 PCs will receive their last security update and the date when most people should find a way to move to Windows 11 to ensure that they stay secure.

As it has done for other stubbornly popular versions of Windows, though, Microsoft is offering a reprieve for those who want or need to stay on Windows 10: three additional years of security updates, provided to those who can pay for the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.

The initial announcement, written by Windows Servicing and Delivery Principal Product Manager Jason Leznek, spends most of its time encouraging users and businesses to upgrade to Windows 11 rather than staying on 10, either by updating their current computers, upgrading to new PCs or transitioning to a Windows 365 cloud-based PC instead.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Benj Edwards)

On Tuesday, IBM and Meta announced the AI Alliance, an international coalition of over 50 organizations including AMD, Intel, NASA, CERN, and Harvard University that aims to advance "open innovation and open science in AI." In other words, the goal is to collectively promote alternatives to closed AI systems currently in use by market leaders such as OpenAI and Google with ChatGPT and Duet.

In the AI Alliance news release, OpenAI isn't mentioned by name—and OpenAI is not part of the alliance, nor is Google. But over the past year, clear battle lines have been drawn between companies like OpenAI that keep AI model weights (neural network files) and data about how the models are created to themselves and companies like Meta, which provide AI model weights for others to run on their own hardware and allow others to build derivative models based on their research.

"Open and transparent innovation is essential to empower a broad spectrum of AI researchers, builders, and adopters with the information and tools needed to harness these advancements in ways that prioritize safety, diversity, economic opportunity and benefits to all," writes the alliance.

Enlarge (credit: TrevorJacob | YouTube)

Trevor Jacob, a 30-year-old YouTuber pilot who intentionally crashed his plane to drive up views on a sponsored video, has been sentenced to six months in federal prison, the US Attorney's Office announced Monday.

Earlier this year, Jacob pled guilty to "deliberately" crashing the plane, destroying the plane wreckage, and repeatedly lying to officials, obstructing federal probes into the crash. His sentence is much lower than the maximum sentence of 20 years that he may have faced had he not accepted a plea deal.

An "experienced pilot, skydiver, and former Olympic athlete," Jacob hatched his plot to crash the plane after a company agreed to sponsor a video in which Jacob would promote a wallet, the US Attorney's Office said.

Enlarge / That "Coming 2025" probably won't apply to any PC version. (credit: Rockstar)

PC players will likely have to wait a bit longer than their console counterparts to play the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI. In a press release accompanying last night's earlier-than-scheduled trailer launch, Rockstar specifically says it is "proud to announce that Grand Theft Auto VI is coming to PlayStation 5 computer entertainment systems and Xbox Series X|S games and entertainment systems in 2025."

The explicit lack of any immediate PC release plans in that statement shouldn't be a shock to longtime Rockstar Games watchers. Sure, the 2D, top-down Grand Theft Auto actually launched on Windows and MS-DOS(!) a few months before the more popular port to PlayStation in 1998. And the game's 1999 sequel debuted on PlayStation and Windows on the same day.

When it comes to major 3D releases, Rockstar clearly prioritizes console launches over PC ports.

Since 2000, though, Rockstar has clearly prioritized its console releases over any PC ports. When one of Rockstar's console games is released on the PC, the port tends to come anywhere from five months to over two full years after the first console release, according to an Ars analysis. Even Grand Theft Auto DLC like "The Lost and the Damned" and "The Ballad of Gay Tony" hit the PC well after their console launches—420 days and 166 days, respectively.