Month: December 2024

CES 2024 is nearly here, and as the Las Vegas event draws ever closer we’re starting to see teases of some of the reveals already. This time it’s Asus’ turn to give us a sneak peak (via Twitter) at what may be on display at its launch event come January 9, and it looks like a fairly hefty refresh of the ZenBook Duo.

While we’re unlikely to learn the specs until the big reveal proper, Asus’ tweet gives us a shadowy glimpse at what looks like a new ZenBook Duo with two same-sized screens, and what seems to be a removable full-size keeb to boot. 

This would be quite the upgrade over the previous Duo with its tiltable screen pad and integrated keyboard, and it looks like this new model allows you to remove the keyboard entirely for full access to those full-sized screens.

It’s a design concept that Asus has played with before in the form of the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED with its very own removable keeb (albeit with one single, foldable display), so there’s some evidence to suggest that the new ZenBook Duo may have learnt a thing or two from its bigger brother. Given the prominent reference to “Duo AI Experiences” it seems reasonable to infer that this new Duo may w…

In a welcome bit of feel good industry news, Blasphemous level designer Enrique Colinet revealed on Twitter that Larian Studios was one of the game’s biggest backers on Kickstarter, and that the studio never made a big deal of it or asked for the backer rewards such a contribution would entail.

“Not many people know this, but @larianstudios was one of the biggest contributors during the @BlasphemousGame Kickstarter campaign,” Colinet wrote alongside a screenshot of the game’s credits with “Larian Studios LLC” plainly visible. “They dropped a four figures sum, never asked for their rewards, and just kept making one of the best games ever done in recent years. Legends!” 

While Larian’s full list of backed projects is private, you can make out the company’s logo among the 3 contributors to Blasphemous’ $1000 “The Punisher” tier on its Kickstarter page.

Blasphemous is a dark and brutal metroidvania influenced by the Souls series and the aesthetics of Spanish Catholicism⁠—as a product of parochial schooling, I’ve always been intrigued by Blasphemous’ deliciously, well, blasphemous take on the religion I was raised in. We gave the original o…

This week: I just so happened to be listening to Mustafa Suleyman’s book, The Coming Wave: AI, Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma. In which, the DeepMind co-founder goes into his thoughts on AI and the “technological revolution” he suggests has already begun.

When a generative AI system creates an image or some text, it all begins with training. Without an understanding of how words are statistically related to one another, or without knowledge of what an image is showing, a generative AI cannot successfully recreate it. The image generated by an AI might be a new work in itself, a complete original, though it’s influenced by real works—millions of them—owned by millions of people.

How AI companies, or the firms which create datasets used by AI systems, continue to collect data is a source of much contention—an uncomfortable truth hanging over AI’s exponential growth. Many AI firms have quietly assumed a position of acting as though they’re al…