NASA is teaming up with Microsoft to create an AI chatbot designed to make it easier to access and understand scientific data about the Earth. The tool, called Earth Copilot, will be able to answer questions about our planet by condensing NASA’s wide swath of geospatial information into easy-to-digest responses.

To create the tool, NASA is integrating AI into its data repository, allowing Earth Copilot to refer to this information when answering questions, such as “What was the impact of Hurricane Ian in Sanibel Island?” or “How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect air quality in the US?”

NASA aims to “democratize” access to scientific data with the launch of Earth Copilot, as obtaining and understanding the information within NASA’s database is currently more difficult for people who aren’t researchers or scientists.

“For many, finding and extracting insights requires navigating technical interfaces, understanding data formats and mastering the intricacies of geospatial analysis — specialized skills that very few non-technical users possess,” Tyler Bryson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of health and public sector industries, said in the announcement. “AI could streamline this process, reducing time to gain insights from Earth’s data to a matter of seconds.

Right now, Earth Copilot is only available to NASA scientists and researchers, who will assess the tool’s capabilities. They’ll then explore its integration into NASA’s Visualization, Exploration, and Data Analysis (VEDA) platform, which already offers access to some of the agency’s data.

Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my Wordle today, NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games.

The social media platform Bluesky was hit by an outage on Thursday, amid a rising wave of popularity for the app, which is often described as a friendlier alternative to X,.

Bluesky has at times been the most downloaded app on both the US and UK Apple Stores in recent days, with many social media users leaving X, formerly Twitter, in the wake of the US election.

But on Thursday, some users around the world had trouble getting their feeds and notifications to load.

Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu told the BBC that one of its internet providers “had some downtime, apparently because a fibre cable was out. That means it happened outside of our company”.

Bluesky provided a status notice from Cogent Communications that said some customers using part of its network located between Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, had temporarily lost connectivity.

Not all users experienced the outage, which appeared to be largely resolved late Thursday, according to the company.

In the week since Donald Trump won the US presidential election, 2.25 million users have signed up for Bluesky, which was started by Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter’s cofounders.

The key difference between Bluesky and most other social media platforms is that it is decentralized, meaning it is operated on independent servers and not those owned by the company. Its userbase – while growing – remains relatively small.

Many new users have said their decision to join Bluesky was driven by Elon Musk, who heavily backed Trump’s election campaign and intends to remain involved in the new administration. Threads, Meta’s competitor to X, has also continued to expand.

“People are both disgusted and afraid of Elon Musk and what Twitter has become,” said Cory Johnson, Chief Market Strategist at Epistrophy Capital Research. “Users are fleeing X, and Bluesky and Threads are the beneficiaries.”

This week, the British news outlet the Guardian announced it will no longer post on X, saying the US election underlined its concerns that Musk had been able to use X to “shape political discourse”.

As Thursday’s outage unfolded, Bluesky staff tried to make light of the situation, with one developer joking: “Btw — Today will get interesting! If the site goes down, maybe grab a soda, pet the kitty. We’ll hit it with a wrench as fast as we can.”

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that a ton of early Black Friday deals have dropped. There are the usual suspects like laptops, electronics, gaming gear, and beyond. But me, I prefer to pick up unusual items during the huge holiday sales. You know exactly what I mean, the kind of stuff that doesn’t usually go on sale any other time. One of those items is a portable generator. Where I live it seems like they rarely go on sale, and when you need them most they’re never in stock. People flock to the stores to buy them just before a big storm. Well, right now, Pulsar and Walmart have an incredible deal on a 12,000-watt dual-fuel generator. Normally $900 it’s down to $749 which saves you $151. It can run for up to 12 hours on an 8-gallon fuel tank.

Why shop the Pulsar 12,000-watt dual-fuel portable generator for Black Friday?

You’d be surprised how many people wait until a big storm is coming to start their prepping. That doesn’t just apply to the hurricane-affected regions, it also applies out west and up north. Get your prepping done early people. Like, right now, early. That’s precisely why you might consider grabbing this Pulsar 12,000-watt dual-fuel portable generator during the Black Friday sale. You’ll be ready when the time comes. Who knows, you might even need one this winter?

It’s a 457cc single-cylinder 4-stroke and air-cooled generator with an electric start. It takes both gas and LPG fuel sources, so propane. Plus, it comes with the propane hose you’d need to connect a tank. Automatic voltage regulation and low oil shut-off provide some much-needed safety features. Drop-down handles and wheels make it easier to move around your property. Moreover, a 3-in-1 digital meter keeps you informed at a glance.

It delivers 12,000 peak watts with 9,500 rated watts while powered by gasoline and 10,800 peak watts/ 8,550 rated watts while powered by LPG.

Just in case it needs to be said you cannot use a generator like this inside. It needs to be placed outdoors where it can properly ventilate. Only portable power stations can be used inside because they utilize electric battery technology. Even so, gas generators are still super useful to have and they can help you keep your appliances running in the face of an outage. With something like this you wouldn’t have to throw away spoiled food in your refrigerator — as long as you have it plugged in or a replacement plugged in.

Normally $900 it’s down to $749 which saves you $151. That is a great deal.

Cloud gaming is a growing market and while it’s dominated by services like NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW, services like Boosteroid have popped up to offer an alternative, and giving Boosteroid a shot now comes with a pretty cool gift in the form of free access to PC Game Pass.

Xbox Game Pass subscribers will be familiar with both cloud gaming and the benefits that Game Pass offers across its various plan options. The cloud gaming feature is only available for the Ultimate membership. But PC Game Pass has loads of features and benefits too. Such as new games on day one. Have you ever wanted to play a game on launch day but didn’t have the money to buy it? Well, this is where a PC Game Pass subscription would come in handy. Because you would be able to access those day-one games at no additional charge beyond the monthly subscription cost.

Here’s the really cool part, though. PC Game Pass costs $11.99 a month. But it doesn’t include cloud gaming. Boosteroid, which is a cloud gaming service, would allow you to stream games in the cloud, and you would get PC Game Pass for free. There is one major caveat, however.

Boosteroid subscribers will get a 1-month trial to PC Game Pass

This is the one detail you want to keep in mind. The free access to PC Game Pass only lasts for a month. So after 30 days, you will need to set up payment for the subscription if you want to keep it going. This would be in addition to the monthly cost of Boosteroid. Now, this is still a good deal if Boosteroid is your cloud gaming service of choice. Boosteroid is also available in the US, as well as the UK and several countries in Europe.

In terms of Boosteroid’s cost, it’s €9.89 per month until December 1 for the Ultra plan. The Ultra plan gets high-end VM. Ray-tracing, Frame Generation, up to 4K resolution, and up to 120 frames per second. After the discount ends, the monthly cost is €14.89 per month. So that’s about $10 and about $15 respectively with and without the discount. Basically, it’s a pretty good deal for that first month if you sign up before December because you’ll pay less than the amount of PC Game Pass for one month of Boosteroid, plus get the free month of PC Game Pass.

Boosteroid also works much like GeForce NOW in that you need to own the games you stream. They also have to be supported on Boosteroid. So keep that in mind. The good news is that Boosteroid supports plenty of games. Including several newer titles like CS2, Cyberpunk 2077, Zenless Zone Zero, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and even Diablo IV’s Vessel of Hatred expansion.

The free PC Game Pass offer ends on December 5

If this offer sounds like a good deal to you, then you’ll need to act fast. Boosteroid says the offer is only valid until December 5. On top of that, you’ll need to redeem your free month of PC Game Pass by January 4, 2025. You can redeem the free month by going here and generating a code after signing into your Boosteroid account with an active subscription.

On Thursday, the European Union published its first draft of a Code of Practice for general purpose AI (GPAI) models. The document, which won’t be finalized until May, lays out guidelines for managing risks — and giving companies a blueprint to comply and avoid hefty penalties. The EU’s AI Act came into force on August 1, but it left room to nail down the specifics of GPAI regulations down the road. This draft (via TechCrunch) is the first attempt to clarify what’s expected of those more advanced models, giving stakeholders time to submit feedback and refine them before they kick in.

GPAIs are those trained with a total computing power of over 10²⁵ FLOPs. Companies expected to fall under the EU’s guidelines include OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic and Mistral. But that list could grow.

The document addresses several core areas for GPAI makers: transparency, copyright compliance, risk assessment and technical / governance risk mitigation. This 36-page draft covers a lot of ground (and will likely balloon much more before it’s finalized), but several highlights stand out.

The code emphasizes transparency in AI development and requires AI companies to provide information about the web crawlers they used to train their models — a key concern for copyright holders and creators. The risk assessment section aims to prevent cyber offenses, widespread discrimination and loss of control over AI (the “it’s gone rogue” sentient moment in a million bad sci-fi movies).

AI makers are expected to adopt a Safety and Security Framework (SSF) to break down their risk management policies and mitigate them proportionately to their systemic risks. The rules also cover technical areas like protecting model data, providing failsafe access controls and continually reassessing their effectiveness. Finally, the governance section strives for accountability within the companies themselves, requiring ongoing risk assessment and bringing in outside experts where needed.

Like the EU’s other tech-related regulations, companies that run afoul of the AI Act can expect steep penalties. They can be fined up to €35 million (currently $36.8 million) or up to seven percent of their global annual profits, whichever is higher.

Stakeholders are invited to submit feedback through the dedicated Futurium platform by November 28 to help refine the next draft. The rules are expected to be finalized by May 1, 2025.