Ukraine: Soldiers control machine guns over steam deck
In the defensive war against Russia, Ukraine uses the Steam Deck handheld PC to remotely control the “Sabre” weapon system. This is reported by Dexerto, among others. From a safe distance of up to 500 meters, the soldiers can use the remote-controlled carriage to fire machine guns and fight enemies. The MG turret Saber emerged from a crowdfunding initiative. The system can be equipped with weapons of different calibers and is designed in such a way that operators can see the optics of the weapon on their steam deck and can align the machine gun in height and sideways using an electric motor. Target observation is also possible. The weapon is fired via a magnetic trigger. Saber also has hit analysis. The Steam Deck runs on Linux.
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More AI for Bing
The new Bing can be used immediately by anyone who signs in with a Microsoft account. Initially, this was only via a waiting list, but now the search is immediately accessible as an open preview. Nevertheless, Bing is in a test phase, Microsoft likes to emphasize this when it comes to errors or hallucinations of the AI functions. These functions will be expanded soon. The previous text search is becoming more visual, the blog post says. What is meant is that Bing should soon be able to give image and video answers and create diagrams and graphics. However, a new multimodality will only be available shortly.
Announcement by the EU Commission to Apple
iPhone with USB-C: Many users have been waiting for this for years. Now it could finally be the case with the iPhone 15, which is expected in autumn. However, according to credible reports, Apple is planning to have the corresponding strips certified via the Made-for-iPhone program – and only these should then be able to load or transfer data at full capacity. This is exactly what the EU Commission wants to prevent now: it has issued an explicit warning to Apple. EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton emphasized that restrictions on interaction with chargers are not permitted.
Hydrogel robotic skin
A team from the University of Cambridge’s Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab has taken a step closer to creating an artificial human-like skin with tactile properties. The hydrogel-based skin can be used on humanoid robots and gives them a human sense of touch. The skin is adaptable, very stretchy and biodegradable. The researchers are now working on improving the shape and size of the artificial skin. The goal: It should be able to process and recognize even more complex stimuli. For example, it should not only recognize the location and strength of a touch on a robot hand, but also the position of the finger and whether the hand is damaged.
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