TL;DR

• The European Council has ended its adoption procedure for rules related to phones with replaceable batteries.
• By 2027, all phones released in the EU must have a battery the user can easily replace with no tools or expertise.
• The regulation intends to introduce a circular economy for batteries.

cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/61008

KEY POINTS

• Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of Twitter, on Wednesday announced the debut of a new AI company, xAI, with the goal to "understand the true nature of the universe."
• According to the company's website, Musk and his team will share more information in a live Twitter Spaces chat on Friday.

KEY POINTS

• Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of Twitter, on Wednesday announced the debut of a new AI company, xAI, with the goal to "understand the true nature of the universe."
• According to the company's website, Musk and his team will share more information in a live Twitter Spaces chat on Friday.

Availability and pricing

As with the United States, folks around the world can place a pre-order for the Nothing Phone 2 starting on July 11. General availability begins on July 17.

Our friends up north in Canada will pay CAD $929 for the base 8/128GB model. The 12/256GB version will cost CAD $999, and the highest end 12/512GB version will cost CAD $1,099.

In the UK, the Nothing Phone 2’s 8/128GB model is £579, the 12/256GB model is £629, and the 12/512GB model is £699.

In other regions in Europe, you’ll need to fork over €679 for the 8/128GB variant of the Nothing Phone 2, €729 for the 12/256GB variant, and €849 for the high-end 12/512GB model.

The Nothing Phone 2 will also be available in India, Australia, and a few other areas. Pricing and full availability details are coming soon.

The BBC suspended one of its male presenters on Sunday after he was accused of spending £35,000 buying explicit images from a young person who spent the money on crack cocaine.

From the article:

The move comes less than a year after the companies announced plans to set up the facility in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat.

Some analysts say it marks a setback to the nation's technology industry goals.

However, a government minister says it will have no impact on the country's chip making ambitions.

Taiwan-headquartered Foxconn told the BBC that it will now "explore more diverse development opportunities".

The firm also said the decision was made in "mutual agreement" with Vedanta, which has assumed full ownership of the venture, but did not give details on why it withdrew from the deal.

"We will continue to strongly support the government's 'Make in India' ambitions and establish a diversity of local partnerships that meet the needs of stakeholders," Foxconn added.

New Delhi-based Vedanta said it had "lined up other partners to set up India's first [chip] foundry".

"The surprise pull-out of Foxconn is a considerable blow to India's semiconductor ambitions," Paul Triolo from global advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group told the BBC.

"The apparent cause of the pull-out is the lack of a clear technology partner and path for the joint venture," he added. "Neither party had significant experience with developing and managing a large-scale semiconductor manufacturing operation."

However, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India's Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, said on Twitter that Foxconn's decision had "no impact on India's semiconductor fab[rication] goals. None."

Mr Chandrasekhar added that Foxconn and Vedanta were "valued investors" in the country and "will now pursue their strategies in India independently".

The Indian government has been working on strategies to support the chipmaking industry.

Last year, it created a $10bn fund to attract more investors to the sector, in a bid to become less reliant on foreign chipmakers.

Prime Minister Modi's flagship 'Make in India' scheme, which launched in 2014, is aimed at transforming the country into a global manufacturing hub to rival China.

In recent years, several other firms have announced plans to build semiconductor factories in India.

Last month, US memory chip giant Micron said it would invest up to $825m to build a semiconductor assembly and test facility in India.

Micron said that the construction of the new facility in Gujarat will begin this year. The project is expected to directly create up to 5,000 roles, and another 15,000 jobs in the area.

From the article:

That Google memo about having “no moat” in AI was real — and Google’s AI boss disagrees with it

Just a couple of months ago, a leaked memo said to be from a Google researcher cast doubt on the company’s future in AI, stating that it has “no moat” in the industry — and now, we seemingly have confirmation that it was real. In an interview with Decoder, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google’s DeepMind, told The Verge that although he believes the memo was legitimate, he disagrees with its conclusions.

“I think that memo was real. I think engineers at Google often write various documents, and sometimes they get leaked and go viral,” Hassabis said. “I think it’s interesting to listen to them, and then you’ve got to chart your own course. And I haven’t read that specific memo in detail, but I disagree with the conclusions from that.”

The memo, which was obtained by SemiAnalysis from a public Discord server, says that neither Google nor OpenAI have what they need to succeed in the AI industry. Instead, the researcher claims “a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch”: open-source AI models that the researcher says are “faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable.”

But Hassabis is less pessimistic about Google’s future in the AI industry. He believes that the competitive nature of the company’s researchers will help push Google to the forefront of AI, adding that the newly merged Google Brain and Google DeepMind teams, which Hassabis was asked to lead, will likely result in more breakthroughs.

“Look at the history of what Google and DeepMind have done in terms of coming up with new innovations and breakthroughs,” Hassabis said. “I would bet on us, and I’m certainly very confident that that will continue and actually be even more true over the next decade in terms of us producing the next key breakthroughs just like we did in the past.”

The firm, which represented Twitter as Musk tried to back out of his deal to buy Twitter, received a $90 million fee for getting the deal over the finish line, according to The New York Times. Elon Musk’s Twitter alleges the payment is “unjust enrichment” and wants the fee to be returned.