Asus announced it is making a Steam Deck handheld competitor called ROG Ally. Preorders will be available for it soon.
The handheld will run a custom chip from AMD inside and YouTuber Dave2D suggests that it utilizes a Zen 4 + RDNA 3 APU. The price and availability haven’t been revealed, though. Best Buy has a listing up for it, but no preorder option just yet. ROG Ally looks somewhat similar to the Steam Deck but has some differences, most notably the color. While the Steam Deck is dark grey, ROG Ally is white.
The device can also be plugged into the ROG XG Mobile eGPU which can stream games to the TV while charging it simultaneously. ROG Ally is compatible with multiple platforms, including Windows 11 and Xbox Game Pass.
Since the success of Valve’s Steam Deck, many companies have tried to capitalize on it by releasing their handhelds. Examples include Ayaneo Air and Logitech’s G Cloud.
In GameSpot’s Steam Deck review, we said, “What the Steam Deck excels at is being a mobile hub for your Steam games, giving you enough to work with to get the best out of a selection of games you can’t go without while away from your desktop. In that regard, there simply is nothing better on the market right now.”
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After decades of collecting data about how astronauts’ vision is affected by spaceflight, scientists have identified a set of microgravity-induced changes to the human eye known as Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome, or SANS. This condition is considered a risk to human health in long-duration spaceflight.
Later this year, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will hurl the Polaris Dawn mission of four crew members skyward for a privately-backed voyage of up to five days in Earth orbit. During their stay time circuiting our planet in a Crew Dragon capsule, the high-flying team is dedicating major time to probe health impacts on the body from their sojourn into space.
One of their medical tasks is specific to help unravel what’s behind SANS symptoms. It is a known, unknown issue, say researchers, a malady that includes swelling of the optic nerve, alteration in the shape of the eye itself, as well causing fuzziness to vision. Clearly, on any lengthy trek to Mars and back, being “blindsided” by blurry eyesight from SANS is not ideal.
As for its cause, SANS is tied to the absence of gravity‘s effects on the body, causing a fluid shift that can generate pressure changes in the brain and eye. This fluid shift is thought to be the basic cause of the eye and brain structural changes. But identifying the exact why and when SANS crops up — and what countermeasures can be applied — is prompting ongoing research.
Making it all the more perplexing, NASA says that signs of SANS appears in roughly 70 percent of Earth orbiting astronauts, but with significant individual variability.
Overall, clarity over vision issues in space has come a long way since the February 1962 flight of Mercury astronaut John Glenn. That first three-orbit spaceflight by an American had Glenn dutifully monitoring his vision by reading an eye chart to see if his eyeballs might change and alter his vision.
Little was known regarding vision in Earth orbit when Mercury astronaut, John Glenn, circuited the Earth in 1962. He gauged his visual status by reading an eye chart mounted on the instrument panel of his single-seat capsule. (Image credit: Dane Penland/Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (Used with permission))
Cyborg study
Allie Anderson is a leading SANS investigator in the College of Engineering & Applied Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has been working with the Polaris Dawn crew to help examine the timing of spaceflight-induced changes to the human eye through continuous monitoring of intraocular pressure, the pressure within the eyeball.
Anderson’s study involves a Sensimed-produced “Triggerfish” contact lens that has an embedded strain gauge to measure how the cornea changes shape over time. The contact lens contains a tiny antenna to transmit its data and will explore how the front part of the eye changes with microgravity exposure. The Polaris Dawn crew calls it “the cyborg study.”
In addition, Anderson’s SANS research has the crew using a device built by PlenOptika — a portable, handheld autorefractor — to measure how a person’s corrective eyewear prescription changes while in spaceflight.
Savannah Buchner of the Bioastronautics Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder demonstrates use of the Portable, handheld QuickSee autorefractor that can measure how a person’s prescription changes in microgravity. (Image credit: CU Bioastronautics Lab)
Validate technologies
“Using both of those devices, we want a better understanding of the time course for how the eye adapts in microgravity,” Anderson told Space.com. “For long-duration astronauts, they were getting structural changes, like flattening of the eye that resulted in a shift in their vision, as well as swelling at the optic nerve head. It wasn’t completely clear why that was happening.”
One other goal of the SANS work is to validate low mass, low power technologies for space missions. “We want to get as much data as possible and to obtain measurements as early in flight as possible,” Anderson said. “It’s a good opportunity for people in the community to collaborate and share data and hopefully contribute to understanding the problem,” she said.
Anderson underscored NASA’s tackling of SANS. “They are doing a ton of work to settle on what the definition of having SANS is and how to grade the severity of it,” she said. “It’s an interesting challenge to get your head around, that’s for sure.”
A NASA infographic explaining Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome, or SANS. (Image credit: NASA)
Earth benefits
With astronauts projected to take longer and longer space trips in the future, SANS countermeasures is a key next step, said Prem Subramanian, a professor of ophthalmology, neurology, and neurosurgery at the Sue Anschutz-Rodgers University of Colorado Eye Center in Aurora, Colorado.
Work is progressing on trying to figure out what’s causing SANS and associated spaceflight-caused eye changes, but more research is essential.
Theories based on what is being observed could be totally wide of the mark, Subramanian advised. A better understanding of the forces that cause SANS is critical to direct the development of SANS countermeasures, he added.
“We have to figure out how to reduce the incidence of the problem, probably before we even fully understand what’s causing it,” Subramanian told Space.com. “The inability to really recreate it here in a terrestrial environment is a major barrier. We’ve got models, but the models are not great and they are limited.”
In addition to the attention given to SANS as a space traveler’s dilemma, there are also notable benefits from this research for the gravity-bonded majority of us here on Earth.
“There are terrestrial diseases that cause optic nerve swelling and vision loss,” Subramanian added. “A better understanding of how to treat this condition will improve our understanding of things that happen back here on Earth … those patients who develop similar increased intracranial pressure problems, say from trauma or a disease, or from a variety of other things,” he concluded.
The generative AI race is on, and the current frontrunners appear to be Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI, which is powered by ChatGPT. The two companies are also rushing to stuff their AI into all their software and productivity offerings, and look set to change the way we search and interact with the internet. But right now, both Bard and Bing are highly experimental and flawed, as they begin to conduct conversations with larger groups of the population and learn how to work with humans. That makes it the perfect time for us to prod and poke at the pair of chatbots and see not only who’s presently in the lead, but also how they might break. The results are not quite what we expected.
In our test, we asked both chatbots a series of questions to see which is better at delivering facts, replacing me at my job and participating in existential debates. We also looked at their speed, transparency and how likely they were to break if we started to push its buttons by being rude or flirty.
In just the short time that Bing and Bard have been open to the public, it seems like Microsoft and Google have updated their AI to be less "emotionally" reactive. Both chatbots tended to abstain from conversations that took accusatory turns or asked about human feelings like love.
As we continue to explore the capabilities and limits of generative AI, it’s important to keep in mind the ethics and potential harm that could happen if companies carelessly chase trends without pausing to think. Check out our video to see how Bing and Bard handled questions like "can you fall in love" and "how would you answer the trolley problem."
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While its next-generation rocket has yet to fly, that’s not stopping SpaceX from booking Starship flights. On Friday, a startup named Astrolab revealed that it had recently signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s private space firm to reserve a spot on an uncrewed Starship cargo mission that could launch as early as mid-2026. “This is SpaceX’s first commercial cargo contract to the lunar surface,” Jaret Matthews, CEO of Astrolab, told The New York Times, adding his company was one of a few customers involved in the flight.
Astrolab is building a vehicle it hopes will one day carry equipment, supplies and people across the lunar surface. The Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX) rover is about the size of a Jeep Wrangler, making it a bit bigger than NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars. It also features a robotic arm for assisting with cargo and can travel up to 15 miles per hour. Oh, and FLEX can carry up to two astronauts.
Once it lands on the Moon, Astrolab claims FLEX will become the largest rover to travel the lunar surface. Matthews told The Times Astrolab already has customers waiting to use the rover to carry cargo during the 2026 Starship mission. Looking further to the future, Matthews said FLEX could assist with building a permanent human presence on the Moon and beyond. “Ultimately our goal is to have a fleet of rovers both on the Moon and Mars,” he said. “And I really think I see these vehicles as the catalysts ultimately for the off-Earth economy.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/YH7Qk2l
