Overview of the news of the week in the world of techno.
Year 1800
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Once reserved for PC gamers, Year 1800 made the jump to next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft, a seamless transition.
Kind of SimCity swollen with hormones, which allows you to manage your villages that have become metropolises while forging alliances and launching expeditions, Year 1800 is the continuation of a franchise born 25 years ago. Reserved for PC gamers, it has made the leap to next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft. The transition is flawless: tried on a PS5, Ubisoft’s game adapts well to a console’s more limited controller, with simplified menus leading to sub-menus. You can bet on innovation or aggressiveness, but you have to be ingenious to manage the hundreds of factors that will make your kingdom prosper. Probably the best console game of its kind.
alpaca
PHOTO LIONEL BONAVENTURE, FRANCE PRESS AGENCY
A team from Stanford University managed to build a chatbot as efficient as ChatGPT 4.0 for a cost of just US$600.
A team from Stanford University has achieved a remarkable feat: building a chatbot as efficient as ChatGPT 4.0 for a cost of just US$600. The trick: use ChatGPT to refine and develop another much less powerful robot, called LLaMa 7B, whose source code has been made public by Meta. It is estimated that training ChatGPT cost US$4.6 million; everything indicates that the Stanford team’s robot, called Alpaca, is just as effective. But there is a bone: ChatGPT’s commercial terms of use explicitly prohibit using it to develop a competing product. Which would obviously not prevent cybercriminals from doing it anyway, note the experts.
Luna
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Amazon’s most popular subscription plan is Luna+, which currently provides access to 108 games for $12.99 per month.
Will Amazon succeed where Google had to forfeit? Offered with limited access since October 2020 in the United States, the cloud-based video game platform Luna has been in operation in Canada since Wednesday. Remember that Amazon opened its own studio in Montreal in March 2021. The experience is optimal with the Luna controller, sold for $ 89.99, but compatible with other controllers on phone, computer or Fire TV. The most popular subscription plan is Luna+, which currently gives access to 108 games for $12.99 per month. The choice is honest, but does not compare to the more extensive catalogs of competitors. Interesting option, we have access on Luna to its Ubisoft games purchased for PC.