Lilbits: Nintendo Switch price hike gets a price hike 8 years after launch, a dual-screen cyberdeck, and goo.gl link shortener isn’t (entirely) dead yet

The Nintendo Switch sold for $300 when the game console first launched in 2017. Since then Nintendo has added a lower-cost Switch Lite as well as a premium Switch OLED. And this year the company launched the follow-up Switch 2. There continues to be de…

The Nintendo Switch sold for $300 when the game console first launched in 2017. Since then Nintendo has added a lower-cost Switch Lite as well as a premium Switch OLED. And this year the company launched the follow-up Switch 2. There continues to be demand for original even 8 years after launch, but while most […]

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Tesla loses Autopilot wrongful death case in $329 million verdict

Tesla must pay the plaintiffs $200 million in punitive damages, the jury said.

Tesla was found partially liable in a wrongful death lawsuit in a federal court in Miami today. It's the first time that a jury has found against the car company in a wrongful death case involving its Autopilot driver assistance system—previous cases have been dismissed or settled.

In 2019, George McGee was operating his Tesla Model S using Autopilot when he ran past a stop sign and through an intersection at 62 mph then struck a pair of people stargazing by the side of the road. Naibel Benavides was killed and her partner Dillon Angulo was left with a severe head injury.

While Tesla said that McGee was solely responsible, as the driver of the car, McGee told the court that he thought Autopilot "would assist me should I have a failure or should I miss something, should I make a mistake," a perception that Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk has done much to foster with highly misleading statistics that paint an impression of a brand that is much safer than in reality.

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Ukraine rescues soldier via drone delivery of complete e-bike

Drones can now carry significant payloads.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has placed unbelievable pressure on drone developers on both sides of the war, who have responded with astounding innovations that include:

  • fiber-optic drones (to prevent radio jamming)
  • kamikaze sea drones, eventually equipped with anti-air missiles
  • drones that fire shotguns
  • bomber drones that drop mines and grenades
  • drones that release flaming thermite into trenches
  • long-range, aircraft-style drones that can substitute for small cruise missiles
  • interceptor drones that hunt down other drones
  • first-person view (FPV) drones so maneuverable they can be piloted right through a broken window pane to hit indoor targets
  • ground drones for both combat and transport

Many drone developers are now chasing the next big thing—AI built right into the drone, allowing it to make autonomous targeting decisions if its communication links are cut.

But sometimes you don't need high-tech software, agility, or stealth. Sometimes, you just need a really, really big drone that can carry an entire e-bike and deliver it to a soldier stranded several kilometers away.

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The curious case of Russia’s charm offensive with NASA this week

“We’re going to continue to work on the problems that we have here.”

Although NASA and its counterpart in Russia, Roscosmos, continue to work together on a daily basis, the leaders of the two organizations have not held face-to-face meetings since the middle of the first Trump administration, back in October 2018.

A lot has changed in the nearly eight years since then, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rocky departure of Roscosmos leader Dmitry Rogozin in 2022 who was subsequently dispatched to the front lines of the war, several changes in NASA leadership, and more.

This drought in high-level meetings was finally broken this week when the relatively new leader of Roscosmos, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov, visited the United States to view the launch of the Crew-11 mission from Florida, which included cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Bakanov has also met with some of NASA's human spaceflight leaders at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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Delta denies using AI to come up with inflated, personalized prices

Delta finally explains how its AI pricing works amid ongoing backlash.

Delta spent July dealing with backlash over what the airline company claims is widespread public confusion over its AI pricing system.

Now, Delta has finally come forward to break down precisely how the AI pricing works to dispute what it claims are "incorrect" characterizations by consumer watchdogs, lawmakers, and media outlets.

In a letter to lawmakers who accused Delta of using AI to spy on customers' personal data in order to "jack up" prices, Delta insisted that "there is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing, or plans to use that targets customers with individualized prices based on personal data."

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AIM Max+ laptop aims to bring AMD Strix Halo to the sub-$1000 market

The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 “Strix Halo” processor is a ridiculously powerful mobile chip that combines a 16-core, 32-thread CPU with a Radeon 8060S 40-core integrated GPU that offers the kind of performance you’d expect from discrete g…

The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 “Strix Halo” processor is a ridiculously powerful mobile chip that combines a 16-core, 32-thread CPU with a Radeon 8060S 40-core integrated GPU that offers the kind of performance you’d expect from discrete graphics. There’s also an NPU that supports up to 50 TOPS of AI performance. But these chips ain’t […]

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Dirt cheap handhelds, mini PCs and other gadgets could get more expensive after Aug 29th

Earlier this year the Trump administration ended the “de minimis” exemption on goods shipped from China and Hong Kong to the US. Essentially this meant that items shipped from those regions that were valued under $800 would no longer be exe…

Earlier this year the Trump administration ended the “de minimis” exemption on goods shipped from China and Hong Kong to the US. Essentially this meant that items shipped from those regions that were valued under $800 would no longer be exempt from tariffs. Many sellers found workarounds by doing things like routing their shipments through […]

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ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results

OpenAI scrambles to remove personal ChatGPT conversations from Google results.

Faced with mounting backlash, OpenAI removed a controversial ChatGPT feature that caused some users to unintentionally allow their private—and highly personal—chats to appear in search results.

Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search results and likely only represented a sample of chats "visible to millions." While the indexing did not include identifying information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal details—like highly specific descriptions of interpersonal relationships with friends and family members—perhaps making it possible to identify them, Fast Company found.

OpenAI's chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, explained on X that all users whose chats were exposed opted in to indexing their chats by clicking a box after choosing to share a chat.

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Amazon is considering shoving ads into Alexa+ conversations

Amazon has failed to make Alexa profitable thus far.

Since 2023, Amazon has been framing Alexa+ as a monumental evolution of Amazon’s voice assistant that will make it more conversational, capable, and, for Amazon, lucrative. Amazon said in a press release on Thursday that it has given early access of the generative AI voice assistant to “millions” of people. The product isn’t publicly available yet, and some advertised features are still unavailable, but Amazon’s CEO is already considering loading the chatbot up with ads.

During an investors call yesterday, as reported by TechCrunch, Andy Jassy noted that Alexa+ started rolling out as early access to some customers in the US and that a broader rollout, including internationally, should happen later this year. An analyst on the call asked Amazon executives about Alexa+'s potential for “increasing engagement” long term.

Per a transcript of the call, Jassy responded by saying, in part:

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Research roundup: 7 cool science stories we almost missed

Other July stories: Solving a 150-year-old fossil mystery and the physics of tacking a sailboat.

It's a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. July's list includes the discovery of the tomb of the first Maya king of Caracol in Belize, the fluid dynamics of tacking a sailboat, how to determine how fast blood was traveling when it stained cotton fabric, and how the structure of elephant ears could lead to more efficient indoor temperature control in future building designs, among other fun stories.

Tomb of first king of Caracol found

University of Houston provost and archeologist Diane Chase in newly discovered tomb of the first ruler of the ancient Maya city Caracol and the founder of its royal dynasty. Credit: Caracol Archeological Project/University of Houston

Archaeologists Arlen and Diane Chase are the foremost experts on the ancient Maya city of Caracol in Belize and are helping to pioneer the use of airborne LiDAR to locate hidden structures in dense jungle, including a web of interconnected roadways and a cremation site in the center of the city's Northeast Acropolis plaza. They have been painstakingly excavating the site since the mid-1980s. Their latest discovery is the tomb of Te K'ab Chaak, Caracol's first ruler, who took the throne in 331 CE and founded a dynasty that lasted more than 460 years.

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