As part of Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, parent company Wikimedia announced a slew of partnerships with AI-focused companies like Amazon, Meta, Perplexity, Microsoft and others. The deals are meant to alleviate some of the cost associated with AI chatbots accessing Wikipedia content in enormous volumes by giving the tech companies streamlined access.

As noted by The Verge, the timeline on these deals is a little squirrely. The Wikipedia foundation says that several companies became enterprise partners “over the past year,” while listing Amazon, Google and Meta as “existing” partners. It appears today is the first time they have been officially announced.

The organization sounded the alarm on this issue last year, saying the reduction in traffic due to LLMs and AI summaries could prove existential for the nonprofit and the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s 65 million free articles have served as rich training data for AI chatbots, but all that scraping has driven up server costs at the organization.

Wikimedia had been hoping to move these large firms over to its enterprise platform to help with costs. “It took us a little while to understand the right set of features and functionality to offer if we’re going to move these companies from our free platform to a commercial platform … but all our Big Tech partners really see the need for them to commit to sustaining Wikipedia’s work,” Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise told Reuters.

Under the deal, these companies will have access to high-throughput APIs that can supply chatbot systems with content from Wikipedia as well as Wikimedia’s other projects, including Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiquote and more.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/wikimedia-announces-ai-partners-including-meta-and-microsoft-162834383.html?src=rss

The indie RPG Sea of Stars is being released for mobile platforms on April 7. The iOS and Android versions are priced at just $10, which is a steal considering it cost $35 when it was first released for PC and consoles. Heck, it still costs that much on many platforms.

This is a mobile release, so it’s not an exact port. The interface has been revamped to allow for complete touch control. It’s also compatible with controllers, which is always a good thing with smartphone ports. The Android version has a couple of unique features. It offers Google Play Games achievements and cloud saves across various Android devices.

Otherwise, this is the same great game we know and love. There’s a reason, after all, why Sea of Stars snagged best indie game in a particularly crowded field at The Game Awards two years back.

This is a fantastic retro-inspired RPG with more than a few things in common with the 1990s classic Chrono Trigger. The story is utterly charming, the turn-based battle system is just deep enough and the art and character designs are gorgeous. It’s more than just an homage to 1990s RPGs.

The older versions offer three-player couch co-op, which isn’t available here for obvious reasons. The mobile port will also not allow access to the recently-released Throes of the Watchmaker DLC. That’ll probably come as a paid update down the road. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/indie-rpg-sea-of-stars-hits-ios-and-android-on-april-7-162339690.html?src=rss

A PC mod that added online gameplay to Rockstar’s 2006 school-exploration title Bully was abruptly taken down on Wednesday, roughly a month after it was first made available. While the specific reason for the “Bully Online” takedown hasn’t been publicly discussed, a message posted by the developers to the project’s now-defunct Discord server clarifies that “this was not something we wanted.”

The Bully Online mod was spearheaded by Swegta, a Rockstar-focused YouTuber who formally announced the project in October as a mod that “allows you and your friends to play minigames, role-play, compete in racing, fend off against NPCs, and much more.”

At the time of the announcement, Swegta said the mod was “a project me and my team have been working on for a very long time” and that early access in December would be limited to those who contributed at least $8 to a Ko-Fi account. When December actually rolled around, though, a message on Swegta.com (archived) suggested that the mod was being released freely as an open source project, with a registration page (archived) offering new accounts to anyone.

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YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed is reporting that NVIDIA has “effectively” discontinued the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. In its most recent video, the channel states ASUS “explicitly” told it the RTX 5070 Ti is “currently facing a supply shortage.” As a result, the company has “placed the model into end of life status,” and no longer plans to produce it.

Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is “no longer available to purchase from partners and distributors,” adding they expect that to be the case throughout at least the first quarter of the year. The 5060 Ti 16GB “is almost done as well,” with ASUS stating it no longer plans to produce that model going forward either. Both GPUs are 16GB models, making them more expensive to produce in the current economic climate. And while there might be some hope of the 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB returning later this year, the channel suggests both are unlikely to make a comeback. NVIDIA will reportedly focus on 8GB models like the RTX 5050, 5060, and 5060 Ti 8GB, with the 12GB 5070 set to stick around for now.

NVIDIA did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request. We’re also waiting to hear back from ASUS. We’ll update this article when the companies respond.

The AI boom has created an insatiable demand for RAM and other computer components from data center infrastructure companies. In response, many memory manufacturers have shifted their production lines to focus on high bandwidth memory for those clients at the expense of their regular offerings, leading to dramatically increased prices among consumer RAM kits, GPUs and SSDs. In December, Micron Technology announced it would wind down its consumer-facing Crucial brand to focus exclusively on providing components to the AI industry.

ASUS is the first of NVIDIA’s add-in board (AIB) partners to comment on the memory crunch. AIBs are the companies that produce the majority of GPUs you can buy from NVIDIA and AMD. Historically, NVIDIA has provided its board partners with both the GPU die and memory needed to make a graphics cards. However, a recent rumor suggested the company told its partners they would need to start sourcing memory on their own.

If this is in fact the demise of the 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB, it’s sad news for PC enthusiasts. Many modern AAA games demand more than 8GB of VRAM, making the 16GB GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD the ones you want to buy if you’re building a new system or upgrading your current rig.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/asus-has-stopped-producing-the-rtx-5070-ti-and-5060-ti-16gb-saying-theyve-reached-end-of-life-162012275.html?src=rss

Apple, which spent years as TSMC’s undisputed top customer and helped the Taiwanese foundry become the semiconductor industry’s most important manufacturer, is now fighting for production capacity as Nvidia’s AI chip orders consume an ever-larger share of the company’s leading-edge wafer supply.

TSMC CEO CC Wei visited Cupertino last August to deliver unwelcome news: Apple would face the largest price increase in years and the iPhone maker would no longer have guaranteed access to production capacity across TSMC’s nearly two dozen fabs.

According to Culpium analysis and its supply chain sources, Nvidia likely overtook Apple as TSMC’s largest customer in at least one or two quarters of 2025. TSMC’s revenue climbed 36% last year to $122 billion, the company reported Thursday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday, your phone might have been borderline unusable—at least, when you were away from wifi. That was due to Verizon’s nationwide outage, which impacted roughly two million customers across the United States. If you were among them, you couldn’t use your phone when you were on the go, which is sort of the idea behind cellphones in general. This included the ability to use navigation apps in your car, send emails or messages for work, or make calls outside of SOS mode, which basically limited you to emergency services. Worse, some users are still experiencing issues this morning following Verizon’s official resolution, though there’s likely a quick fix for that.

I don’t have Verizon, but if I did, I’d be a bit ticked off. Outages happen, but this one was massive, and the company still hasn’t offered much of an explanation for what actually happened. In spite of this (or, perhaps because of it) the company does seem keen to smooth the whole thing over. When Verizon announced that it had resolved the outage yesterday evening, it also noted that it would reach out to affected customers directly to issue account credits. It’s a pain to deal with interruptions to services as important as your wireless network, but at least Verizon wants to compensate you for the problem, right? Just don’t expect much.

Verizon’s account credits might seem a bit low

At 9:42 a.m. ET, Verizon made a new post on X, once again apologizing for yesterday’s issues, and revealing what each affected account can expect to receive as compensation: $20.

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Verizon says this number represents “multiple days of service” on average, and that no credit can make up for what happened. That might be true, but in my humble opinion, a larger credit could perhaps get a bit closer to making up for what happened. Maybe this is greater than the on-paper dollar value of losing a day of service, but it’s not like customers think of their bills as paying for their usage. They pay Verizon quite a bit, expecting that their smartphones to be connected at all times within Verizon’s coverage map. Considering the upheaval a day of disconnection no doubt caused, I’m not sure $20 is going to cut it.

But I digress: $20 is the number, and $20 is what affected customers can expect to receive. If you’re among them, Verizon says you can log into the myVerizon app to claim your recompense.

On Thursday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced licensing deals with Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral AI, expanding its effort to charge major tech companies for using Wikipedia content to train the AI models that power AI assistants like Microsoft Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

While these same companies previously scraped Wikipedia without permission, the deals mean that most major AI developers have now signed on to the foundation’s Wikimedia Enterprise program, a commercial subsidiary that sells API access to Wikipedia’s 65 million articles at higher speeds and volumes than the free public APIs provide. The foundation did not disclose the financial terms of the deals.

The new partners join Google, which signed a deal with Wikimedia Enterprise in 2022, as well as smaller companies like Ecosia, Nomic, Pleias, ProRata, and Reef Media. The revenue helps offset infrastructure costs for the nonprofit, which otherwise relies on small public donations while watching its content become a staple of training data for AI models.

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Wikipedia turns 25 today, and the online encyclopedia is celebrating that with an announcement that it has signed new licensing deals with a slate of major AI companies — Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Perplexity and Mistral AI. The deals allow these companies to access Wikipedia content “at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs.” The Wikimedia Foundation did not disclose financial terms.

Google had already signed on as one of the first enterprise customers back in 2022. The agreements follow the Wikimedia Foundation’s push last year for AI developers to pay for access through its enterprise platform. The foundation said human traffic had fallen 8% while bot visits — sometimes disguised to evade detection — were heavily taxing its servers.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said he welcomes AI training on the site’s human-curated content but that companies “should probably chip in and pay for your fair share of the cost that you’re putting on us.” The site remains the ninth most visited on the internet, hosting more than 65 million articles in 300 languages maintained by some 250,000 volunteer editors.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you’re looking for something to entertain your kids for the next several months (and potentially longer), YouTube would like you to know that more than 100 classic episodes of Sesame Street are now streaming on the platform.

The partnership between Sesame Street creator Sesame Workshop and YouTube was first announced last year and encompasses both old episodes as well as new content. Some of the themed compilations that have also been added to YouTube and YouTube Kids focus on specific educational topics such as ABCs and STEM, while others have broader themes like “Adventure & Imagination” and “Friendship & Play.”

Media history enthusiasts also have good reason to check out the new Sesame Street archive. The very first episode, which aired in 1969, is included, back when Kermit the Frog was still hanging out with the likes of Big Bird and Bert.

The YouTube partnership is not to be confused with the deal Sesame Workshop also recently penned with Netflix, which saw new episodes of Sesame Street — now in its 56th season — move to the streamer and PBS from its former home on HBO. The network opted not to renew a partnership that lasted a decade.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/more-than-100-classic-episodes-of-sesame-street-are-now-streaming-on-youtube-and-youtube-kids-151959561.html?src=rss