NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket designed for carrying astronauts to the Moon is facing significant cost increases and being delayed behind schedule, according to a latest audit. The Artemis Moon Program is expected to cost $93 billion by the year 2025, including the already spent $23.8 billion on the SLS system through 2022, making it $6 billion over budget from NASA’s original projections. The audit indicates that having to mix older technology with new systems resulted in complexity which greatly increased cost and time to develop, update and integrate the systems.
The Artemis Moon project is based on Constellation, a program launched in 2005 to return to the Moon by 2020, which was later cancelled. NASA’s Authorization Act of 2010 required the repurposing of already existing technology, contracts and workforce from Constellation, and construction of the SLS.
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NVIDIA’s generative AI lets gamers converse with NPCs
It replies to natural speech, though the responses are… stilted.
NVIDIA’s Avatar Cloud Engine technology called Kairos allows gamers to talk naturally with non-playable characters (NPCs). The company demonstrated the technology during the generative AI keynote at Computex 2023. Though the dialogue is considerably wooden, it could be an interesting dynamic addition to games by using voice-based interactions. For building, customising and deploying large language models as per the character backstories and lore, the technology uses NVIDIA, while keeping guardrails to protect against inappropriate conversations. It uses a speech recognition and speech-to-text tool called Riva, along with NVIDIA’s Omniverse Audio2Face “for instantly creating expressive facial animation of a game character to match any speech track.”
Tesla will open its Supercharger network to other EVs in Canada
Nearly 3,000 EV chargers are also coming to apartments and offices.
Tesla has announced that its existing Supercharger network will be available to other EV brands in Canada. It will begin with a small pilot route between the capital, Ottawa and Sudbury later this year. By 2025, around 750 station will be opened, out of which at least 350 will be 250kW Superchargers. The high charger performance will be important for further long-distance travel. Almost 3,000 EV chargers will be installed in multi-use residential buildings, offices, public spaces and fleets, with the majority being Level 2, and around 100 faster Level 3 outlets, thanks to the Canadian government’s partnership with some third parties.
WhatsApp test brings screen sharing to Android phones
It’s reportedly rolling out to more users soon.
WhatsApp is adding a screen-sharing feature to Android phones that will allow you to share the contents of your screen on video calls with anyone on the other end. However, apparently, the tool is only available for select Android beta users. Although it should be accessible to more people in the coming weeks, it is not guaranteed to work on older Android models or bigger group calls, or with people who are using an outdated version of WhatsApp.
