Stellar Blade has been the subject of some strange controversies since its release in late April, but one of the strangest has to be a recent lawsuit filed against developer Shift Up and Sony that claims its name is guilty of trademark infringement.

IGN reports that the lawsuit was filed in a Louisiana court earlier this month by Griffith Chambers Mehaffey, the owner of film production company called Stellarblade LLC. His lawyers claim that he’s been using stellarblade.com since 2006, and that his company has existed since 2010. However, the game’s release has made it tougher for people to find information about his business.

Mehaffey is seeking damages and for Sony and Shift Up to no longer use the name “Stellar Blade.”

Additionally, the suit claims that the trademarks for his business and Shift Up’s game look “confusingly similar.” Both have blue color schemes and a stylized S, although the two look very different otherwise.

This wasn’t a problem back when the game was announced in 2019 under the name Project EVE, although Sony revealed the Stellar Blade name at its September 2022 State of Play According to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Stellar Blade trademark was initially filed in January 2023, with an “opposition” filed on September 11, 2024. Mehaffey filed his own trademark in June 2023, and then sent a cease and desist letter to Shift Up in July.

Stellar Blade was the PlayStation 5’s first big console exclusive release for 2024. While reviews were mixed (Digital Trends said had great style but was “lacking substance”), Shift Up revealed that the game sold 1 million units over the first couple of months. It dropped out of PlayStation’s top 20 downloads list in June.

Earlier this month, Google redesigned the Gemini homepage on desktop. The redesign removed the “Hello” + greeting and suggestions and now offers a simple “Hello can I help you?” message. The search engine giant has now provided the same on mobile devices. The Gemini app on Android devices has received a new simplified homescreen, which is now more minimalistic than earlier.

Gemini app’s new simplified homescreen replaces the old design with a minimalistic interface

According to a report by 9to5Google, the Gemini app on Android has received a new update, which brings a more simplified homescreen. The new update replaces the old design with a more minimalistic interface. The new UI is designed to prioritize user experience.

Earlier, there was the “Gemini Advanced” logo on top, apart from a handful of suggestions and the “Chats & Gems” list. However, the new homescreen only has the “Hello, [user name]” greeting. It now also includes a new message bubble icon in the top-left corner, which gives you access to the Recent conversations and Gems. Notably, the chat box at the bottom of the screen is unchanged.

As you can see, the new Gemini app interface draws inspiration from the search’s homepage. If you want to access the new Gemini interface, then simply update the app on your Android device. The new design seems to be rolling out gradually, it may not be available in all regions right away.

Google recently also added Gems to Gemini’s mobile app

It’s worth mentioning that Google added Gems to Gemini’s mobile app earlier this month. Gems were originally launched for gemini.google.com at the end of August on the web. However, now they are also available in the Gemini app on Android and iOS devices. Earlier, the “Recent” section was renamed to “Chat & Gems”. However, with the latest homescreen layout update, they are moved to the bubble icon in the top-left corner.

For those unaware, Gems in Gemini allows you to program the AI assistant for a single and repetitive task. Notably, they can “remember a detailed set of instructions to help you save time on tedious, repetitive or difficult tasks”. Google also offers a handful of pre-generated Gems like a learning coach, brainstormer, career guide, and writing editor.

Amazon is hoping to get more people hooked on Music Unlimited with a pre-Prime Day offer. Those who haven’t tried the service before can get three months of access for free. The offer is even better for Prime members who haven’t checked out the music-streaming platform. They can use it for four months at no extra cost. Music Unlimited typically costs $11 per month without Prime and $10 per month for Prime members.

The company isn’t leaving existing subscribers entirely out in the cold. Those with an individual Amazon Music Unlimited plan can upgrade to the Family Plan at no extra cost for two months.

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Amazon Music Unlimited is free for three months to those who haven’t used it before. Prime members who are newcomers to the service get an additional month of access at no extra cost.

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Amazon Music Unlimited includes more than 100 million songs, many of which are available in high definition and/or spatial audio. The service also includes ad-free versions of many popular podcasts.

While it may not be the first music streaming service that springs to mind for most folks, Amazon Music Unlimited may be worth checking out. The HD music selection is particularly notable, since Spotify has yet to offer that feature.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice in the lead up to October Prime Day 2024.

Running AI in the public cloud can presents enterprises with numerous concerns about data privacy and security.

That’s why some enterprises will choose to deploy AI on a private cloud or on-premises environment. Together AI is among the vendors looking to solve the challenges of effectively enabling enterprises to deploy AI in private clouds in a cost effective approach. The company today announced its Together Enterprise Platform, enabling AI deployment in virtual private cloud (VPC) and on-premises environments.

Together AI made its debut in 2023, aiming to simplify enterprise use of open-source LLMs. The company already has a full-stack platform to enable enterprises to easily use open source LLMs on its own cloud service. The new platform extends AI deployment to customer-controlled cloud and on-premises environments. The Together Enterprise Platform aims to address key concerns of businesses adopting AI technologies, including performance, cost-efficiency and data privacy.

“As you’re scaling up AI workloads, efficiency and cost matters to companies, they also really care about data privacy,” Vipul Prakash, CEO of Together AI told VentureBeat. “Inside of enterprises there are also well-established privacy and compliance policies, which are already implemented in their own cloud setups and companies also care about model ownership.”

How to keep private cloud enterprise AI cost down with Together AI

The key promise of the Together Enterprise Platform is that organizations can manage and run AI models in their own private cloud deployment.

This adaptability is crucial for enterprises that have already invested heavily in their IT infrastructure. The platform offers flexibility by working in private clouds and enabling users to scale to Together’s cloud.

A key benefit of the Together Enterprise platform is its ability to dramatically improve the performance of AI inference workloads. 

“We are often able to improve the performance of inference by two to three times and reduce the amount of hardware they’re using to do inference by 50%,” Prakash said. “This creates significant savings and more capacity for enterprises to build more products, build more models, and launch more features.” 

The performance gains are achieved through a combination of optimized software and hardware utilization.

 “There’s a lot of algorithmic craft in how we schedule and organize the computation on GPUs to get the maximum utilization and lowest latency,” Prakash explained. “We do a lot of work on speculative decoding, which uses a small model to predict what the larger model would generate, reducing the workload on the more computationally intensive model.”

Flexible model orchestration and the Mixture of Agents approach

Another key feature of the Together Enterprise platform is its ability to orchestrate the use of multiple AI models within a single application or workflow. 

“What we’re seeing in enterprises is that they’re typically using a combination of different models – open-source models, custom models, and models from different sources,” Prakash said. “The Together platform allows this orchestration of all this work, scaling the models up and down depending on the demand for a particular feature at a particular time.”

There are many different ways that an organization can orchestrate models to work together. Some organizations and vendors will use technologies like LangChain to combine models together. Another approach is to use a model router, like the one built by Martian, to route queries to the best model. SambaNova uses a Composition of Experts model, combining multiple models for optimal outcomes.

Together AI is using a different approach that it calls – Mixture of Agents. Prakash said this approach combines multi-model agentic AI with a trainable system for ongoing improvement. The way it works is by using “weaker” models as “proposers” – they each provide a response to the prompt. Then an “aggregator” model is used to combine these responses in a way that produces a better overall answer.

“We are a computational and inference platform and agentic AI workflows are very interesting to us,” he said. “You’ll be seeing more stuff from Together AI on what we’re doing around it in the months to come.”

Two of the industry’s most famous sisters, Erin and Sara Foster, sit down alongside business partner Phil Schwarz at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 to talk about consumer investing, culture curation, and what it means to be a creator in the modern age. 

Moderated on the Disrupt main stage, the conversation will surround the creator economy, consumer investing, and so much more.

Erin and Sara Foster are the definitions of a multi-hyphen duo. 

They are the founders of Oversubscribed Ventures, which invests in consumer brands and tech (investments include the diaper brand Kudos). Sara is an angel investor, too, with a portfolio that includes the swimwear brand Summersalt. The sisters are also the founders of the clothing and lifestyle brand Favorite Daughter, which is sold at luxury retailers Moda Operandi and Saks. There’s also an upcoming Netflix show called “Nobody Wants This,” created by Erin and starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, playing a podcaster and a rabbi who fall in love. 

Sara and Erin themselves have a podcast called The World’s First Podcast, which breaks down topics of love and self-improvement. 

In other words, there will be much to talk about. 

And of course, not to forget Phil Schwarz. Schwarz is a partner at the early-stage firm Corazon Capital. He helped Sara and Erin Foster create Oversubscribed Ventures and serves as an adviser on its investment committee. He was the CMO of Tinder and Head of Growth at Match Group and co-founded the Kaplan/Techstars EdTech Accelerator.

In other words, even more to talk about!

Don’t miss out on this game-changing conversation! Be part of Disrupt 2024 with 10,000 fellow attendees, including startup, tech, and VC leaders, at Moscone West, San Francisco, October 28–30. Grab your tickets now to unlock savings of up to $600 during Ticket Reboot Week.

By the end of the month, the United Kingdom is set to shutter its last operating coal-fired power plant.

The Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire is slated to close on September 30th, marking the end of coal power in the UK. It’s turning the page on an era of dirty energy that the UK helped usher in globally and now has to leave behind to meet climate goals.

The coal power plant was first commissioned in 1967, and received its last coal delivery in June. The 2,000 megawatt-capacity plant can produce enough electricity for some two million homes, according to the energy company Uniper that owns it. Over its decades in operation, it’s generated enough energy to make more than 21 trillion cups of tea, or roughly 1 billion cups per day, Uniper says.

Still, it’ll reportedly take two years to decommission the plant after it shuts down, requiring 125 staff to stay on board until then. Uniper announced plans last year to eventually produce hydrogen at the site instead of coal power. Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen fuel doesn’t create planet heating carbon dioxide pollution when burned.

The caveat is that most hydrogen today is made through a process called steam methane reforming, which still leads to greenhouse gas emissions. A cleaner way to make hydrogen is through electrolysis, splitting water molecules using renewable energy. Uniper says it’s interested in producing hydrogen through electrolysis at the former coal plant, reaching a capacity of 500 megawatts by the end of the decade. After redeveloping the site to produce low carbon energy, Uniper says it could create up to 8,000 jobs.

Coal still makes up more than a third of the world’s electricity mix, generating more power and greenhouse gas emissions than any other fuel. But coal-fired power generation has dropped dramatically in the UK since 2012, falling from nearly 40 percent to just 1 percent of the UK’s electricity mix by 2023. Greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector have fallen 74 percent over the same period of time as wind and solar replace coal.

The UK passed a Climate Change Act in 2008 that set it on a path to ditch coal on the way to reaching a target of net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Once the Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant closes, the UK will become the first advanced economy and Group of 7 nation to phase out coal power, according to climate change think tank E3G.