Month: February 2024

Enlarge (credit: Paramount+)

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Paramount Global are no longer considering a merger that would have put the Max and Paramount+ streaming services under one corporate umbrella. Per a CNBC report today citing anonymous “people familiar with the matter," WBD and Paramount had been mulling a merger for “several months."

In December, reports started swirling about WBD and Paramount discussing a potential merger. Axios even reported that WBD CEO David Zaslav and Paramount CEO Bob Bakish met in person for “several hours” and that Zaslav also met with Shari Redstone, the owner of National Amusements Inc. (NAI), Paramount’s parent company. Now, CNBC reports that discussions between the media giants “cooled off this month.” Paramount and WBD haven’t commented.

When news of the potential merger dropped, it was unclear what sort of regulatory hurdles the media conglomerates might have faced if they tried becoming one. Combined, the companies would have had the second-biggest streaming business by subscriber count, trailing Netflix.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

On Monday, Microsoft announced plans to offer AI models from Mistral through its Azure cloud computing platform, which came in conjunction with a 15 million euro non-equity investment in the French firm, which is often seen as a European rival to OpenAI. Since then, the investment deal has faced scrutiny from EU regulators.

Microsoft's deal with Mistral, known for its large language models akin to OpenAI's GPT-4 (which powers the subscription versions of ChatGPT), marks a notable expansion of its AI portfolio at a time when its well-known investment in California-based OpenAI has raised regulatory eyebrows. The new deal with Mistral drew particular attention from regulators because Microsoft's investment could convert into equity (partial ownership of Mistral as a company) during Mistral's next funding round.

The development has intensified ongoing investigations into Microsoft's practices, particularly related to the tech giant's dominance in the cloud computing sector. According to Reuters, EU lawmakers have voiced concerns that Mistral's recent lobbying for looser AI regulations might have been influenced by its relationship with Microsoft. These apprehensions are compounded by the French government's denial of prior knowledge of the deal, despite earlier lobbying for more lenient AI laws in Europe. The situation underscores the complex interplay between national interests, corporate influence, and regulatory oversight in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

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  The Xiaomi 14 Ultra. [credit: Xiaomi ]

Xiaomi's big Mobile World Congress launch is the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. This is a top-tier flagship that of course is not coming to the US but is available in Europe for a whopping 1,499 euros ($1,624).

Let's get the specs out of the way: This has a 120 Hz, 3200×1440 OLED, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 5000 mAh battery. A proprietary 90 W wired "HyperCharge" will get the phone from 0–100 percent battery in 33 minutes, while a wireless 80 W version will charge the phone in 46 minutes.

Xiaomi is very proud that all four sides of the screen are curved. The whole screen kind of rises up and bubbles out from the aluminum body. Xiaomi says the glass has "deep bending around all four sides and corners, creating a seamlessly elegant curved form." All images, videos, websites, and apps expect to display on a flat surface, so curved displays serve to distort the picture you're looking at, and thankfully some manufacturers have started to drop the idea. Having the display be a big glass bubble also means you now have four glass corners on the front of the phone, so uh, don't drop it!

Enlarge (credit: ASI/NASA)

In 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos in a successful test of planetary defense technology. That success was measured by a significant shift in Dimorphos' orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. Since then, a variety of observatories have been analyzing the data to try to piece together what the debris from the impact tells us about the structure of the asteroid.

All of those observations have taken place at great distances from the impact. But DART carried a small cubesat called LICIACube along for the ride and dropped it onto a trailing trajectory a few weeks before impact. It took a while to get all of LICIACube's images back to Earth and analyzed, but the results are now coming in, and they provide hints about Dimorphos' composition and history, along with why the impact had such a large effect on its orbit.

Tracing debris

LICIACube had both narrow and widefield imagers on board (named LEIA and LUKE via some carefully chosen backronyms). It trailed DART through the impact area by about three minutes and captured images starting about a minute before the impact and continuing for over five minutes afterward.

Enlarge (credit: Amazon Studios)

The screenwriter who penned the original screenplay for the 1989 cult classic film Road House, R. Lance Hill, is suing Amazon over its remake due out this March.

Hill, whose Hollywood pen name is David Lee Henry, has alleged that Amazon, MGM Studios, and United Artists (UA) failed to pay him licensing fees after the copyright to Road House was reverted back to Hill in November 2023. The studios, Hill claimed, have refused to recognize that Hill has recovered the copyright, instead moving forward with an allegedly "unauthorized remake."

According to Hill, he transferred the copyright to UA in 1986 after writing the Road House screenplay "on spec"—which means "that he wrote it on his own volition, in the hope of finding an interested motion picture studio once the work was completed."

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  Lenovo's transparent laptop prototype on display at MWC 2024 this week, as captured by India Today. [credit: India Today/YouTube ]

In 2010, Samsung demoed a transparent laptop prototype. The OLED laptop looked uniquely futuristic, and there were even reports that Samsung would release the design for real. But it never did. And 14 years later, even with a different type of display technology improving the experience, it seems like there still isn’t a strong argument for transparent-screen consumer laptops—even with AI shoehorned into the design.

Just a prototype for now

Before we get into the Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop Concept, keep in mind that it is just a concept. Lenovo has no official plans to release this computer and describes it as a way to explore how transparent displays and AI can be combined.

That said, Lenovo's executive director of ThinkPad portfolio and product, Tom Butler, told The Verge he has "very high confidence" that such technologies will be available in a consumer product within the next five years. If that's true, Lenovo will need to figure out what people might want in capabilities.

Enlarge / A row of happy EVs charge with no drama, no phone calls to the support line, and no one shuffling spots. (credit: Roberto Baldwin)

The Bay Bridge, as usual, was a mess. The link between San Francisco and Oakland, even on the weekends, can be a source of gridlock-induced frustration. After navigating through the toll plaza and the tunnel on Yerba Buena Island (the sort of halfway point between the two cities), I checked my state of charge and made my way to Electrify America's flagship location in the City by the Bay (which is frankly both cities, but San Francisco has a better PR team).

The past few months, electric vehicles have been making headlines. But not in a good way. News of major US automakers General Motors and Ford reducing their output goals has people screaming that electric vehicles are doomed (they're not). GM is still wading through manufacturing issues, leading to a reduction in its ability to build EVs on its Ultium platform. Plus, there's the charging infrastructure, which, as detailed by just about every media outlet, is not great. Reliability issues are real and well-documented, and that's horrible for EV adoption. It's also bad for automakers and, more importantly, it's terrible for the planet.

So it's comforting to get some good news: Electrify America has opened an indoor location in San Francisco, and it just might be the future of charging.