Month: June 2024

Enlarge / For 2026, F1 cars are going on a little bit of a diet. (credit: Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile)

Earlier today, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile laid out the direction for Formula 1's next set of technical regulations, which will go into effect in 2026. It will be the second big shakeup of F1's technical regs since 2022 and involves sweeping changes to the hybrid powertrain and a fundamental rethink of how some of the aerodynamics work.

"With this set of regulations, the FIA has sought to develop a new generation of cars that are fully in touch with the DNA of Formula 1—cars that are light, supremely fast and agile but which also remains at the cutting edge of technology, and to achieve this we worked towards what we called a 'nimble car' concept. At the center of that vision is a redesigned power unit that features a more even split between the power derived from the internal combustion element and electrical power," said Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA's single-seater technical director.

Didn’t we just get new rules?

It feels like F1 only just got through its last big rule change with the (re)introduction of ground-effect cars at the start of 2022. Since the early 1980s, F1 cars have generated aerodynamic grip, or downforce, via front and rear wings. But drivers found it increasingly difficult to follow each other closely through corners as the dirty air from the car in front starved the following car's front wing of air, robbing it of cornering grip in the process.

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  The new PS5 packaging, as seen on the PlayStation Direct online store, is missing the "8K" label in the corner. [credit: PlayStation Direct ]

When we first received our PlayStation 5 review unit from Sony in 2020, we reacted with some bemusement to the "8K" logo on the box and its implied promise of full 7630×4320 resolution output. We then promptly forgot all about it since native 8K content and 8K compatible TVs have remained a relative curiosity thus far in the PS5's lifespan.

But on Wednesday, Digital Foundry's John Linneman discovered that Sony has quietly removed that longstanding 8K label from the PS5 box. The ultra-high-resolution promise no longer appears on the packaging shown on Sony's official PlayStation Direct store, a change that appears to have happened between late January and mid-February, according to Internet Archive captures of the store page (the old "8K" box can still be seen at other online retailers, though).

A promise deferred

This packaging change has been a long time coming since the PS5 hasn't technically been living up to its 8K promise for years now. While Sony's Mark Cerny mentioned the then-upcoming hardware's 8K support in a 2019 interview, the system eventually launched with a pretty big "coming soon" caveat for that feature. "PS5 is compatible with 8K displays at launch, and after a future system software update will be able to output resolutions up to 8K when content is available, with supported software," the company said in an FAQ surrounding the console's 2020 launch.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Apple has taken a rare step and publicly committed to a software support timeline for one of its products, as pointed out by MacRumors. A public regulatory filing for the iPhone 15 Pro (PDF) confirms that Apple will support the device with new software updates for at least five years from its "first supply date" of September 22, 2023, which would guarantee support until at least 2028.

Apple published the filing to comply with new Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) regulations from the UK that went into effect in late April. As this plain-language explainer from the Center for Cybersecurity Policy and Law summarizes, the PSTI regulations (among other things) don't mandate a specific support window for manufacturers of Internet-connected devices, but they do require companies to publish a concrete support window and contact information for someone at the company who can be contacted with bug reports.

As publications like Android Authority have pointed out, five years is less than some Android phone makers like Google and Samsung have publicly committed to; both companies have said they'll support their latest devices for seven years. But in reality, Apple usually hits or exceeds this seven-year timeline for updates—and does so for iPhones released nearly a decade ago and not just its newest products.

Enlarge (credit: DuckDuckGo)

On Thursday, DuckDuckGo unveiled a new "AI Chat" service that allows users to converse with four mid-range large language models (LLMs) from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Mistral in an interface similar to ChatGPT while attempting to preserve privacy and anonymity. While the AI models involved can output inaccurate information readily, the site allows users to test different mid-range LLMs without having to install anything or sign up for an account.

DuckDuckGo's AI Chat currently features access to OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo, Anthropic's Claude 3 Haiku, and two open-source models, Meta's Llama 3 and Mistral's Mixtral 8x7B. The service is currently free to use within daily limits. Users can access AI Chat through the DuckDuckGo search engine, direct links to the site, or by using "!ai" or "!chat" shortcuts in the search field. AI Chat can also be disabled in the site's settings for users with accounts.

According to DuckDuckGo, chats on the service are anonymized, with metadata and IP address removed to prevent tracing back to individuals. The company states that chats are not used for AI model training, citing its privacy policy and terms of use.

Enlarge / The R1S and R1T don't look much different from the electric trucks we drove in 2022, but under the skin, there have been a lot of changes. (credit: Rivian)

In rainy Seattle this week, Rivian unveiled what it's calling the "Second Generation" of its R1 line with a suite of mostly under-the-hood software and hardware updates that increase range, power, and efficiency while simultaneously lowering the cost of production for the company. While it's common for automotive manufacturers to do some light refreshes after about four model years, Rivian has almost completely retooled the underpinnings of its popular R1S SUV and R1T pickup just two years after the vehicles made their debut.

"Overdelivering on the product is one of our core values," Wassym Bensaid, the chief software officer at Rivian, told a select group of journalists at the event on Monday night, "and customer feedback has been one of the key inspirations for us."

For these updates, Rivian changed more than half the hardware components in the R1 platform, retooled its drive units to offer new tri- and quad-motor options (with more horsepower), updated the suspension tuning, deleted 1.6 miles (2.6 km) of wiring, reduced the number of ECUs, increased the number of cameras and sensors around the vehicle, changed the battery packs, and added some visual options that better aligned with customizations that owners were making to their vehicles, among other things. Rivian is also leaning harder into AI and ML tools with the aim of bringing limited hands-free driver-assistance systems to their owners toward the end of the year.