Tag Archives: competitor

Elon Musk Responds Rashly After NASA Reveals Plans to Source Lunar Lander from SpaceX Competitor

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NASA’s Acting Administrator Sean Duffy seems to have drawn the ire of Elon Musk.

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, took to social media on Tuesday to criticize Mr. Duffy’s intelligence and recent actions as the leader of the space agency.

“Sean Dummy is trying to destroy NASA!” Musk stated on X, using a derogatory nickname for the acting administrator. In another post, he remarked: “There’s no way the leader of America’s space program can have a double-digit IQ.”

On Monday, Duffy announced that NASA is considering utilizing a lunar lander from a SpaceX competitor to help return astronauts to the moon before China establishes its presence there.

NASA initially planned to use SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket system for the lunar landing.

Musk conducted a poll on Tuesday asking his followers on X: “Should someone whose greatest achievement is climbing trees lead America’s space program?” One option was, “Yes, chimpanzees are good at it!” while the other suggested, “No, he needs More Brains!”

By Tuesday afternoon, the poll had garnered around 110,000 votes.

In 2021, SpaceX secured a $2.9 billion contract to use its Starship rocket to land two astronauts on the moon during NASA’s Artemis III mission, aimed for a 2027 launch.

However, Musk’s company has faced delays in the testing and development of Starship, which experienced several explosions this year.

Meanwhile, political pressure is mounting as the competition with China escalates; the nation is targeting a moon landing by 2030 and has already dispatched two robotic probes and tested a new rocket for manned lunar missions.

Duffy appeared on Fox News and CNBC on Monday, stating that NASA would expand the Artemis III contract, inviting proposals from rival space companies to maintain U.S. competitiveness against China.

“We are not going to wait for a single company,” Duffy reiterated in an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” on Monday. “We are focused on moving forward and winning the second space race against China.”

Duffy mentioned his and President Donald Trump’s goal to return astronauts to the moon during Trump’s second term.

He cited Blue Origin, the space launch company founded by Jeff Bezos, as a potential competitor capable of providing unique technology.

This statement appeared to antagonize Musk.

In a subsequent post, Musk questioned the ability of other commercial space firms to meet such stringent deadlines.

“In comparison to other space industries, SpaceX is advancing at remarkable speed,” he asserted. “Moreover, Starship will ultimately execute the full lunar mission. Mark my words.”

In reality, SpaceX is so ahead of its rivals that it is already conducting regular NASA missions to transport astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station.

Reacting to Musk’s remarks, Duffy replied on X: “Love the enthusiasm. The race to the moon is on. Great companies should welcome challenges. Competition among innovators benefits America!”

However, Musk’s tirade on Tuesday took a personal turn, questioning Duffy’s competence to lead NASA. Duffy is temporarily in charge of the agency; a Wall Street Journal report suggested he is positioning himself to continue in that role alongside his responsibilities as transportation secretary.

The report indicated that Duffy is contending against billionaire Jared Isaacman, who may reemerge as a candidate for the NASA leadership position. Trump had retracted Isaacman’s nomination in May, just ahead of an anticipated confirmation vote. This withdrawal followed what the president described as a “thorough review of prior connections.” (Trump did not elaborate, but some Republicans had expressed reservations that Isaacman previously donated to Democrats.)

Musk has shown support for Isaacman, who has made two orbital flights on commercial SpaceX missions.

NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens informed NBC News that President Trump has asked Duffy to consult with potential administrators, and that the interim administrator “will be glad to assist by evaluating candidates and providing honest feedback.”

“Sean is thankful to the president for this opportunity to lead NASA,” Stevens stated. “At the president’s direction, Sean is committed to ensuring America returns to the moon before China. He has indicated that NASA’s integration into the Cabinet, possibly even the Department of Transportation, might be beneficial, though he has never claimed he wishes to continue in this role.”

The White House did not respond to inquiries for comment.

The timing of Isaacman’s controversy in May coincided with a public feud between Trump and Musk, which escalated before the SpaceX CEO departed the White House on a special public service assignment. Musk’s departure was fraught with tension as he criticized President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” labeling it a “huge, outrageous, pig-filled Congressional spending plan” and a “distasteful, ugly bill” that would exacerbate the budget deficit.

playing cards We welcomed Duffy in July. Becomes interim administrator of NASA.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

Google faces a £5 billion lawsuit in the UK for allegedly driving its competitor out of business.

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Google is facing a £5 billion lawsuit in the UK for allegedly stealing from its competitors in the internet search market and exploiting this advantage to overcharge companies for advertising.

A class action lawsuit filed in the Court of Competition Appeals claims that Google has manipulated search results to charge higher prices for ads compared to a fair market scenario.

It is alleged that Google, a part of Alphabet, struck deals with phone manufacturers to make Google the default search engine on IPHONE, preinstalling the Google search app and Chrome browser on Android devices to stifle competition from Apple.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of numerous companies by competition law experts, argues that Google’s ad offerings give search engines better features and more visibility than its rivals.

A Google spokesperson dismissed the lawsuit as speculative and opportunistic, stating that consumers and advertisers choose Google willingly.

Businesses are said to have no alternative but to use Google Ads for promotion, as securing a spot on Google’s homepage is crucial for visibility and success.

The UK’s Competitive and Markets Bureau is currently investigating Google’s search services and their impact on the advertising market, as Google faces multiple antitrust probes worldwide.

In a recent antitrust case loss in the US, Google faces the possibility of having to restructure its business and divest parts of its advertising technology, impacting its revenue streams and industry practices.

The European Commission has accused Google of violating competition rules by favoring its own services in search results over competitors, potentially resulting in hefty fines.

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President Donald Trump seeks to dismiss antitrust lawsuits against tech companies, while the UK government considers reducing the Digital Services Tax on high-tech firms like Amazon, Google, and Apple.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Creating a New Competitor to EA Sports FC: Exciting News for Gamers from FIFA

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TTwo years ago, Electronic Arts’ long and lucrative relationship with FIFA fell apart, leading EA to create a new brand called EA Sports FC for the soccer simulation series. FIFA president Gianni Infantino grumpily declared the search for a new developer, stating, “the only real game that bears the FIFA name will be the best for gamers and soccer fans.” Given EA’s extensive experience in producing mainstream soccer simulations over two decades, the challenge for FIFA to find a competitive studio seemed daunting.

News now surfaces that the world soccer federation has teamed up with 2K Games for a new FIFA game, potentially launching later this year. A tweet from Ghanaian retailer MohPlay claims they have signed a deal with 2K Games, confirming earlier rumors about FIFA’s partnership with 2K.

This collaboration makes sense as 2K has significant experience in sports games like NBA 2K, NFL 2K, WWE 2K, TopSpin 2K, and PGA Tour 2K. Moreover, the PGA license was acquired by 2K after EA’s relationship with them ended a few years ago, showcasing their track record in this space.


PGA Tour 2K23. Photo: 2K Games

However, a new FIFA game this year seems unlikely. Even if 2K were to start immediately in May 2022 when EA’s FIFA relationship ends, they would have only two years to build the team, develop the game, digitize players, motion capture, and model stadiums.

Player reactions vary, with many welcoming competition from EA’s franchise, especially considering Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer brand’s decline. On the other hand, 2K Games has faced criticism for heavy monetization in its games, particularly in the NBA series where players can buy advantages with real money.

It’s exciting to see a new independent contender emerge in the market, reminiscent of classic soccer games like Sensible Soccer and Kick Off 2, or even early 3D titles. Games like Sociable Soccer are interesting, but the hope for something entirely new, fun, fast, and quirky remains, much like the unique concepts introduced in golf simulation games by What the Golf and Desert Golfing. The future of soccer gaming holds promise for innovation and creativity.

Could the revival of classic soccer game ideas like the ZX Spectrum classic Subbuteo or licensed games by retired pros become a reality? Fans of nostalgic and unconventional soccer games eagerly await what the future holds beyond the realm of multi-million dollar tournament licenses and microtransactions.

What to Play


Galactic Care. Photo: Brightrock Games

If you’re longing for the days of humorous resource management games, Galacticare by Brightrock Games will bring you nostalgic joy this summer. Acting as a space-themed hospital, the game challenges you to build a hospital to care for extraterrestrial patients with unique ailments. The game’s forgiving learning curve and cartoonish style prioritize enjoyment over strict business practices.

Available on: PC, PS5, Xbox
Estimated play time: 30+ hours

What to Read


Helldivers 2. Photo: Sony Computer Entertainment

  • Helldivers 2 has been a major success this year, with GamesIndustry.Biz featuring an interesting interview with Arrowhead Games, the creator of the game. The interview sheds light on the challenges faced by the company, particularly in handling the repercussions of immense success on its staff’s wellbeing. CEO Johan Pyllestedt expresses concerns about the threats and disrespect received by the studio, highlighting the darker side of the gaming community.

  • Another interview delves into the vision of Neil Druckmann, the head of Naughty Dog Studios, who aims to redefine mainstream gaming with his next project. The interview corrects misconceptions about his previous statements, emphasizing the intent and context behind his words.

  • Activision has confirmed the title for this year’s Call of Duty game, Black Ops 6. Details will be unveiled at the Xbox Games Showcase on June 9th, followed by an in-depth stream.

  • An upcoming book titled Playing with Reality: How Games Shape Our World by neuroscientist Kelly Clancy offers a comprehensive exploration of the role games have played throughout history. From medieval games to modern-day simulations, the book promises an intriguing perspective on the impact games have on society.

What to Click On

Question Block


Genshin Impact. Photo: HoYoverse

A reader named Ants poses an interesting question:

“We often hear that the video game industry is bigger than the movie and music industries, driven by higher unit costs of video games compared to movies or music albums. As a video game journalist, have you come across reports that validate this claim?”

While the argument has some merit, it overlooks important factors. Each video game sale can translate into multiple players, amplifying the financial impact per copy sold. Additionally, the rise of free smartphone games like Candy Crush and Genshin Impact, catering to billions of gamers worldwide, challenges the notion of high unit costs for games. The media’s focus on gaming revenue versus film or music earnings oversimplifies the rich diversity and cultural value of games into a financial lens, lacking depth and nuance.

It’s hoped that the industry coverage will evolve beyond revenue figures towards a more holistic understanding of the gaming landscape, emphasizing creativity, innovation, and cultural significance over financial metrics.

If you have a question for Question Block or feedback on the newsletter, feel free to reach out by clicking “Reply” or emailing us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Everything you should know about the new ChatGPT AI competitor, Google Gemini

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The emergence of ChatGPT in 2023 has been so significant that even those who are not typically online or technologically savvy are familiar with its existence. However, as OpenAI continued to develop its AI tool, competitors also began to emerge.

Shortly after launching ChatGPT, Google announced its own competitor called Bard. Bard is capable of doing everything that ChatGPT can, but with the backing of the world’s largest search engine.

Now, Google is taking another step forward with a new project called Google Gemini, which appears to have already surpassed ChatGPT. However, the question on everyone’s mind is whether Google will surpass ChatGPT to become the top AI in 2024?

What is Google Gemini and how does it work?

OpenAI’s well-known tool is ChatGPT, which is powered by GPT-4, a large-scale language model that uses images, text, context, and other factors. For Google, Gemini serves a similar role to GPT-4, functioning as an engine that runs AI programs.

Gemini was built from the ground up and leverages teams across Google to generalize and understand various forms of content. It was trained on a large dataset that includes books, articles, code repositories, music, audio recordings, and other media. This data is processed into a format that is efficiently understood by Gemini, enabling the model to learn relationships between different terms and media, and how to respond to prompts, questions, and suggestions.

How to try Google Gemini for free

There are currently two ways to test Google Gemini, with the most accessible option being through Google Bard, which has been built on a test version of Gemini. An alternative way is to access Gemini through features integrated with Google Keyboard and the Recorder app on a Google Pixel 8 Pro.

What can Gemini do?

Google has been showcasing Gemini’s capabilities, demonstrating its ability to understand, answer questions, and perform various tasks. While impressive, some of these demonstrations are curated, making it difficult to gauge their real-world performance. Gemini can interact with different forms of digital content, from images to videos, and is capable of making connections between different words and images.

Google Gemini vs. GPT-4: Which is better?

Gemini has been touted as outperforming GPT-4 in various categories used to test model knowledge and reasoning. However, these impressive statistics have been verified by Google itself, leaving room for questions about Gemini’s real-world performance. Google plans to release different versions of Gemini, each with varying levels of intelligence and functionality, similar to OpenAI’s GPT model.

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Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Bluesky, X’s competitor, reaches 2 million users; federation to launch in early next year

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Bluesky is a company building a decentralized alternative to Twitter/X. announced It now has 2 million users, an increase of another 1 million since September, despite still being an invite-only app. It also revealed deadlines for other important goals, saying it plans to have a public web interface up and running by the end of this month and start federation by early next year.

The latter is one of the most important differentiators between Bluesky and X, as it allows Bluesky to function as a more open social network. This means it works more like Mastodon, where users can choose which servers to join and move their accounts around freely. This is what Bluesky today claims is “billionaire-proof” and criticizes Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, now known as X.

“Rather than being bound to the whims and black-box algorithms of private companies, you have the freedom to choose (and exit) at any time.” Explained in company blog post. “And wherever you go, your friends and relationships will be there too,” it states.

Similar to Mastodon, a decentralized service, federation allows anyone to run their own service and connect to other services running the same protocol. For Bluesky, this is done like this: AT protocol The company is also developing consumer services and mobile apps in parallel. But his other major decentralized social network, Mastodon, uses an established protocol, his ActivityPub, which has grown significantly in the months since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. It is attracting attention.

Since then, other companies have adopted ActivityPub and Mastodon, including Mozilla, Flipboard, Medium, and Automattic (WordPress.com’s parent company). Unless Bluesky makes the AT protocol and ActivityPub interoperable in some way, there could be challenges regarding Bluesky’s ultimate reach. Bridging Maybe the two of you Technically It’s possible, but it’s more likely to be in the future, not in the near future.

Meanwhile, Bluesky is working to make its services more accessible, including launching a public web interface later this month. This will allow anyone to view his Bluesky posts, even if they don’t have an account. This could make the network more promising in terms of being a true competitor to X in breaking news and conversation, but it could expose Bluesky users’ posts to the outside world in ways they are not ready for. There is also. (This app currently does not have an option to set your profile to “private” like Twitter/X does. some users is not Happy about this. )

Despite its growth, Bluesky’s reluctance to drop its invite-only status and open its network to more users has allowed other competitors of X to gain a foothold. Last month, for example, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Instagram Threads, an alternative to X, had just under 100 million monthly active users. He believes he can reach 1 billion users in the next few years. Threads also plans to interoperate with ActivityPub in the future.

Bluesky’s announcement follows Threads’ rapid release of features to make the app more competitive with X, including a chronological feed, support for displaying likes, search, and (free) Includes an edit button, web version, voting, GIF support, and more. , topic tags, and soon a developer API. Mastodon also took advantage of the opportunity presented by the Twitter acquisition and launched an easier-to-use version of its service in September of this year. However, Mastodon currently has 1.6 million monthly active usersHowever, it is much smaller than a thread.

In addition to today’s news, Mr. Bluesky also provides mobile push notifications, shareable user lists, email verification, advanced feed and thread settings for sorting and filtering posts, a media tab in user profiles, and a user profile for your own users. We also mentioned other recently released features, such as a Likes tab for profiles. , the suggestions below, and various accessibility improvements.

Bluesky started life as a Twitter project under Jack Dorsey, but the company was spun off from Twitter. $13 million How to start research and development. Mr. Dorsey sits on its board of directors. This year, the company raised an $8 million seed round led by Neo to further its development and transformed from a public benefit LLC to a public benefit C Corp.

Source: techcrunch.com