Sony already invested the cash to convert its last disc-making factory.

The video game disc is dead, and Sony’s been planning to kill it for some time, according to a report out of Austria. The man who leads Sony’s discmaking operations, Sony DADC president Dietmar Tanzer, told ORF Salzburg that the company’s Thalgau plant produces 600,000 discs every day, half of which are for PlayStation. But since it’ll only be making 10 percent of that volume in 2028, it’s planning to retrain all 300 employees to work on optical microlenses instead.

Thalgau isn’t just one of Sony’s disc plants. It’s where the disc-making division is headquartered, and appears to be its only remaining wholly owned disc manufacturing facility. Sony made discs in the United States for decades, originally in Terre Haute, Indiana and later in New Jersey, but it closed the latter plant in 2011 and moved all manufacturing from Indiana to Thalgau in 2022. Today, the Indiana facility markets itself to automakers who need help packaging and assembling headlights and the like instead.

This transition didn’t happen overnight. A behind-the-scenes video from December 2024 shows that the Thalgau plant was already working on microlenses as of then: Those lenses, too, are created using discs: “Up to 60 micro-optics fit on one disc,” reads the auto-generated caption. “Up to 60 micro-optics fit on one disc,” reads the auto-generated caption. Image: Regional TV Salzburg

ORF Salzburg writes that Sony has now invested €30 million to manufacture these microlenses, and that mass production may begin “as early as next year.”

The funeral for PlayStation discs has begun Microlenses are theoretically used in all kinds of emerging applications where you might want to bend light, including headsets, but it appears that Sony may cater to automakers here, too. The head of Sony’s micro optics division gave ORF Salzburg the example of “a car turn signal that is projected onto asphalt.”

All of this is to say: Sony didn’t make this decision in a hurry, and it isn’t likely to change its mind despite the predictable backlash. It’s been winding down disc manufacturing for decades, and it’s ripping off one last band-aid with PlayStation.

According to Sony DADC’s website, it has produced over 26.4 billion discs to date — the vast majority, 23 billion of them, were made between 1983 and 2022 in Terre Haute, Indiana.

I currently have an AMD video card (6700 XT) and Wayland support is excellent. Also, multi-monitor support in Wayland works perfectly.

So what's your experience with Nvidia's 555 driver in Wayland? Those using it in conjunction with KDE 6.1, what's your experience with multi-monitor VRR? I ask about VRR because I heard that multi-monitor VRR in Wayland is still problematic.

This is for my own curiosity if an Nvidia video card could be considered as an upgrade option.

Google is getting AI training data from Reddit as part of a new partnership between the two companies. In an update on Thursday, Reddit announced it will start providing Google “more efficient ways to train models.”

The collaboration will give Google access to Reddit’s data API, which delivers real-time content from Reddit’s platform. This will provide “Google with an efficient and structured way to access the vast corpus of existing content on Reddit,” while also allowing the company to display content from Reddit in new ways across its products.

When Reddit CEO Steve Huffman spoke to The Verge last year about Reddit’s API changes and the subsequent protests, he said, “The API usage is about covering costs and data licensing is a new potential business for us,” suggesting Reddit may seek out similar revenue-generating arrangements in the future.

The partnership will give Reddit access to Vertex AI as well, Google’s AI-powered service that’s supposed to help companies improve their search results. Reddit says the change doesn’t affect the company’s data API terms, which prevent developers or companies from accessing it for commercial purposes without approval.

Just last week, a report from Bloomberg said Reddit struck a $60 million training deal with an unnamed AI company. Google Search is currently expanding the test of a “forums” filter that lets you browse through results from sites with human discussion, like Reddit, Stack Overflow, and Hacker News.

Despite this deal, Google and Reddit haven’t always seen eye to eye. Reddit previously threatened to block Google from crawling its site over concerns that companies would use its data for free to train AI models. Reddit is also poised to announce its initial public offering within the coming weeks, and it’s likely making this change as part of its effort to boost its valuation, which sat at more than $10 billion in 2021.

When I click on the login link, I don't see the login section as shown in the screenshot. I've tried logging in using Edge, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. To no avail.

Research says funding cuts and poor organisation stop Canadians from accessing healthcare – and 20% have no doctor at all

Note: these are my chosen quotes from the articles:

The CMAJ study, led by family physicians and researchers at the University of Toronto and published on Monday, compares the Canadian healthcare system with those of Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and the UK. Those countries were chosen because 95% or more citizens have access to a family physician.

She pointed out that Norwegians and Finns are automatically registered to a doctor or health centre, and those in the UK have a right to register with care providers in their immediate communities.

Many Canadians, however, wait for years on provincial family doctor waitlists. Others have to call around town in hopes of finding someone willing to accept them. In the interim, they cobble care together through urgent care clinics, hospital ERs and, in some cases, private out-of-pocket services.

Immigrants to Canada are increasingly leaving this country for opportunities elsewhere, according to a study(opens in a new tab) conducted by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the Conference Board of Canada.

In fact, the number of immigrants who left Canada rose by 31 per cent above the national average(opens in a new tab) in 2017 and 2019.

According to the study, factors that influence onward migration include economic integration, a sense of belonging, racism, homeownership, or a lack thereof, and economic opportunities in other countries, the report revealed.

French supermarket Carrefour has put stickers on its shelves this week warning shoppers of "shrinkflation" - where packet contents are getting smaller while prices are not.