The expansion is expected to create more than 100 jobs in the next two years, and more than 700 jobs by 2030.
“Strategic Reserve Funds are targeted investments that create good paying jobs and spur innovation across Washington,” Ferguson said in a news release. “This project not only achieves those goals, it also reaffirms our state’s role as a leader in the space industry. I am proud to support pioneering projects like this in Washington.”
“We’ve spent the last year proving what’s possible. Now we’re scaling to deliver it,” Portal co-founder and CEO Jeff Thornburg said. “This support from Washington isn’t just about growth. It’s about building a strategic capability for the nation and doing it right here in Bothell.”
Revenue for the Strategic Reserve Fund comes from unclaimed lottery prize money. The funds are intended to attract and retain jobs and economic investment in Washington, limited to highly strategic projects that deliver significant job creation and capital investment. These projects are considered in partnership with local associate development organizations, such as Economic Alliance Snohomish County. The governor determines awards based on recommendations from the Department of Commerce.
“Portal Space Systems represents the kind of bold, future-facing innovation we’re proud to see growing in Washington,” said Commerce Director Joe Nguyen. “With the governor’s new investment, Portal is better equipped to scale up its cutting-edge operations. This strengthens Washington’s position as a hub for world-class talent and national space infrastructure.”
Grants from the Strategic Reserve Fund must be accompanied by private investment. Since its founding in 2021, Portal has raised more than $22 million in venture capital financing and grants, and received a commitment of $45 million in public-private funding through the U.S. Space Force’s STRATFI program.
Microsoft's push to make artificial intelligence the core of its product strategy is running into resistance from the very customers it expected to embrace it. Multiple Azure sales units fell short of ambitious growth targets tied to Foundry, Microsoft's marketplace for AI models and agent-building tools. In response, the company...
If you need the fastest possible speeds for external storage, Hyper might have the tool for you. The company's new HyperDrive enclosure uses USB4 V2 to turn any NVMe drive into a high-performance external drive, but you'll have to pay a hefty sum for the privilege.
Buying Microsoft software is always more expensive than we'd like, but only if it's coming direct from Microsoft itself. Thankfully, third-party retailers offer some significant discounts, and all you have to do is make sure to choose the right one for you. And we've found a ton of deals on Windows, Office, and more.
Normally, a brand would be thrilled if its new holiday commercial went viral, but a new McDonald's Netherlands ad has gone viral for all the wrong reasons.
Originally posted to YouTube on Dec. 6, the holiday commercial was clearly made using generative AI, and it also features a label disclosing it as "AI-generated." The commercial's theme is "The most terrible time of the year," and it features a montage of short clips depicting holiday traditions descending into chaos. The clips bear the hallmarks of generative AI video — generic-looking actors, exaggerated movements, strange inconsistencies, and a flat, artless aesthetic.
After the video gained mainstream attention, the backlash from AI haters was overwhelming. While the "most terrible time of the year" theme may have been intended as tongue-in-cheek, many viewers found the idea cynical. By Dec. 9, McDonald's Netherlands pulled the holiday commercial, or advert.
McDonald's provided Mashable with the following statement from McDonald's Netherlands:
"McDonald’s Netherlands has decided to remove our AI-generated Christmas advert. It was intended to reflect the stressful moments that can occur during the holidays in the Netherlands, but we recognize that for many of our guests, the season is 'the most wonderful time of the year'. We respect that and remain committed to creating experiences that offer Good Times and Good Food for everyone."
Recently, Coca-Cola published its own AI-generated holiday commercial, made in partnership with the AI studio Secret Level. Though Coca-Cola also faced backlash for its ad, the company has continued playing the ad throughout the holiday season, undeterred by critics.
The BBC reports that the McDonald's Netherlands commercial was made by the Dutch company TBWA\Neboko and the U.S. company The Sweetshop. Speaking to Futurism, the CEO of Sweetshop emphasized that a lot of human labor went into the final product.
"We generated what felt like dailies — thousands of takes — then shaped them in the edit just as we would on any high-craft production,” the CEO reportedly said. "This wasn’t an AI trick. It was a film."
But for AI critics, any amount of AI in filmmaking or advertising is unacceptable, full stop. Likewise, writers and actors' unions have fought against expanding the use of generative AI. Even so, Hollywood and Madison Avenue leaders appear eager to adopt the new technology.
As of Dec. 10, you can grab the new Amazon Echo Dot Max for just $79.99 instead of $99.99. That's 20% off its list price and beats its Black Friday price by $10. For a speaker just over a month old, that's a pretty solid discount.
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While it's just slightly bigger than the Echo Dot, the Dot Max features nearly three times the bass. It's powerful enough to fill large spaces with its 0.8-inch tweeter and a 2.5-inch woofer that support lossless, high-definition audio. It can even adapt to its environment to provide the best sound possible. Now that the original Echo is obsolete, the Dot Max seems to be taking its place, with a similar look and the exact price point.
Just like other Echo smart speakers, you can use it to control lights, locks, and other smart home devices, set routines, ask it for the weather, and so much more without needing a separate hub. And since it was built for Alexa+, you'll get access to a more natural and conversational voice assistant that's wildly advanced.
Whether you're in the market for a new smart home speaker or you're looking for a gift for someone on your list, the brand-new Echo Dot Max has a lot to offer — especially at its lowest price to date.
The year is 1987. Beverly Hills Cop II is the highest-grossing movie. "Walk Like an Egyptian" is the hottest song. The Iran-Contra scandal dominates American political headlines, while Konami’s Contra sucks up coins in arcades. But towering above them all is the watershed moment of Jaws arriving on the NES. ("This time there's no escape!", warned the box art.) Now, 38 years later, the 8-bit game is returning as a Limited Run Games physical re-release.
The retro release coincides with the Spielberg movie's 50th anniversary. From December 19 to January 18, you can pre-order a physical copy for Switch and PS5.
It will be available in two physical editions: a standard ("Retro Edition") one for $35, and a deluxe ("The Bigger Boat Edition") one for $100. The latter adds an NES-inspired box, a physical CD of the game soundtrack, a keychain and — best of all — a pixelated shark lamp. Both versions include original and "enhanced" versions of the 1987 game.
Promo art for the Jaws NES reissue
Limited Run Games
The game is split mainly between a birds-eye view (where you pilot your boat around the map) and an underwater side view (where you harpoon the shit out of marine wildlife). Eventually, you'll encounter Jaws. After several of these encounters, gradually diminishing his hit points, you'll try to finish him off in a faux-3D perspective on the water's surface. If you think this sounds like a minor variation of what you found in a handful of other licensed NES games from that era, you wouldn't be wrong.
You can pre-order the Jaws re-release from Limited Run Games' website, starting on December 19 at 10 AM ET. In the meantime, you can refresh your memory of the 8-bit game with the video below.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-nes-game-jaws-is-getting-a-retro-physical-re-release-on-switch-and-ps5-221052996.html?src=rss
Qualcomm has acquired RISC-V startup Ventana to strengthen its CPU ambitions beyond mobile, "reinforcing its commitment and leadership in the development of the RISC-V standard and ecosystem," the company said in a press release. CRN Magazine reports: The San Diego-based company said Ventana's expertise in RISC-V, a free and open alternative to the Arm and x86 instruction set architectures, will enhance its CPU engineering capabilities and complement "existing efforts to develop custom Oryon CPU technology." Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Qualcomm, which has already been using RISC-V for some products outside the PC and server markets, said Ventana's contributions will boost its "technology leadership in the AI era across all businesses," indicating the broad impact expected by this acquisition. "We believe the RISC-V instruction set architecture has the potential to advance the frontier on CPU technology, enabling innovation across products," Durga Malladi, executive vice president and general manager of technology planning, edge solutions and data center for Qualcomm, said in a statement. "The acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems marks a pivotal step in our journey to deliver industry-leading RISC-V-based CPU technology across products."
Further reading: Qualcomm Is Buying Arduino, Releases New Raspberry Pi-Esque Arduino Board
Longtime Slashdot reader MadCow42 writes: Canonical just announced that they're packaging AMD's ROCm libraries (for AIML and HPC with both data-center GPUs as well as desktop/laptop GPUs), directly into the Ubuntu Universe archive. You can run ROCm on Ubuntu today but you have to install it via a script from AMD and manually remove and reinstall for any upgrades or bug fixes. Having it in Ubuntu as a normal Debian package will make it much easier to install and also to maintain in the long run via normal apt tooling ('apt upgrade'). This also means that ROCm can be an automatically-installed dependency for other packages, which doesn't happen today.
And, interestingly, Canonical has committed to providing long-term-support for ROCm in Ubuntu -- which is particularly exciting for edge and IoT devices that may have a long life in the field and need regular security patches and updates.
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