GM and LG are building a third Ultium factory in the US. The $2.6 billion plant in Lansing, Michigan will make batteries for GM’s electric vehicles.

Ultium Cells, a joint venture between the companies, expects to create 1,700 manufacturing jobs at the plant, which is projected to open in late 2024. At full production, Ultium expects the factory to have a battery cell capacity of 50 gigawatt hours, and it will be able to adapt to advancements in materials and tech. Construction is underway on Ultium's other battery manufacturing sites in Tennessee and Ohio.

Ultium's cells can be stacked vertically or horizontally inside battery packs, which allows GM to customize the layout for each vehicle design. Energy options range between 50kWh and 200kWh. GM says Ultium system may deliver a range of 450 miles or more on a single charge and accelerate from zero to 60MPH in three seconds. The company is designing Ultium-powered EVs with fast charging in mind — most of them will have 400-volt battery packs and up to 200 kW fast charging. Electric trucks, meanwhile, will have 800-volt packs with 350kW charging.

The Ultium factory forms part of a new $7 billion investment by GM (the company's largest single outlay to date) in four Michigan sites. The automaker is spending $4 billion to convert a plant in Orion Township, which will become its second US manufacturing location for the Chevrolet Silverado EV and electric GMC Sierra.

Conversion work is underway, and GM expects to start making the electric trucks at the plant in 2024. It expects to retain around 1,000 current jobs and add more than 2,350. Production of the Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV will continue during the transition. The company projects that it will convert half of its North American assembly capacity to EV production by 2030.

GM is aiming to make more than a million EVs in the US per year by the end of 2025, and today's investment announcement forms a key part of that. The company's also spending more than $510 million to increase production at two sites in the Lansing area, one of which is building the next-gen Chevrolet Traverse and Buick Enclave.

Substack is expanding into video with a native player. The feature is currently in private beta, so only a limited number of creators can upload videos directly to a post for now. The newsletter service plans to open up the option to everyone in the coming weeks.

Creators can share videos publicly or only with paid subscribers. Videos will be playable on web versions of posts and they'll appear as clickable images in emails. Substack notes that creators have full ownership of their videos, as with their mailing list and everything else they share on the platform.

Among those who are testing the feature are legendary musician Patti Smith and chef Andrew Zimmern. They highlight the fact that creators will be able to share things like musical performances and step-by-step guided recipes with subscribers without having to rely on third-party services like YouTube or Vimeo. Others might share makeup tutorials, workouts or career advice.

This is the latest in a line of additions to Substack creators' tool chests. The platform introduced a podcast hosting option in 2019 and it expanded to comics last year.

Substack isn't the only membership platform of its ilk with its own video player. Patreon said in November it was building one too. On the flip side, Facebook and Twitter have made a push into newsletters over the last year amid Substack's rise to prominence and the battle to attract and keep creators on their platforms.

EA has announced that Respawn Entertainment is making three more Star Wars games. The studio — also known for Titanfall and Apex Legends — is working on a follow up to its hit 2019 action-adventure title Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, though it’s not clear if the upcoming game is a direct sequel.

A first-person shooter overseen by a former Star Wars Battlefront producer in the pipeline too. In addition, a strategy game produced by Respawn is on the way, with Bit Reactor leading development. The new third-party studio is headed up by Greg Foertsch, who previously worked on the XCOM series.

EA's exclusive license to develop and publish Star Wars games expires next year. An open-world Star Wars game from Ubisoft’s The Division 2 studio Massive Entertainment is already in the works, while Quantic Dream is developing Star Wars: Eclipse. Before those and EA's trifecta of titles even get close to hitting your console or PC, you'll be able to dive into Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which arrives on April 5th.

Google is said to be developing a new Chromecast aimed at folks who haven't splurged on a 4K TV. According to Protocol, the low-end device will harness the Google TV interface and include a remote, as well as a maximum resolution of 1080p.

The device, which could be named Chromecast HD with Google TV, is said to be capable of decoding the AV1 video codec (something the 4K-capable Chromecast with Google TV doesn't support at the hardware level). It seems likely that, given the lower resolution output, the device will cost less than the $50 Chromecast with Google TV.

It's been over three years since Google unveiled its third-gen 1080p Chromecast. That device, which is still available for $30, doesn't come with a remote and nor does it offer any native apps. Given that Roku and Amazon sell 1080p streaming devices for under $50, it's probably about time Google introduced a lower-end Chromecast with the Google TV UI, a remote and perhaps even Stadia compatibility.

It's not the first time we've heard about a Chromecast dongle with the codename "Boreal." 9to5 Google last week reported Google was working on a device with that name, but no specs were mentioned.

It's not clear if or when Google plans to release the Chromecast HD with Google TV (or whatever it's called). It doesn't seem quite splashy enough to be showcased at the annual fall hardware event, but, as Protocol notes, the company has debuted some devices at its I/O developer conference, which typically takes place in May. Other recent rumors suggest the first Google-branded smartwatch and the Pixel 6a could arrive around that time.

Meta has completed the first phase of a new AI supercomputer. Once the AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) is fully built out later this year, the company believes it will be the fastest AI supercomputer on the planet, capable of "performing at nearly 5 exaflops of mixed precision compute."

The company says RSC will help researchers develop better AI models that can learn from trillions of examples. Among other things, the models will be able to build better augmented reality tools and "seamlessly analyze text, images and video together," according to Meta. Much of this work is in service of its vision for the metaverse, in which it says AI-powered apps and products will have a key role.

"We hope RSC will help us build entirely new AI systems that can, for example, power real-time voice translations to large groups of people, each speaking a different language, so they can seamlessly collaborate on a research project or play an AR game together," technical program manager Kevin Lee and software engineer Shubho Sengupta wrote in a blog post.

RSC currently has 760 Nvidia DGX A100 systems with a total of 6,080 GPUs. Meta believes the current iteration is already among the fastest AI supercomputers on the planet. Based on early benchmarks, it claims RSC can, compared with the company's older setup, run computer vision workflows up to 20 times faster and the NVIDIA Collective Communication Library more than nine times faster.

Meta says RSC can train large-scale natural language processing models three times faster as well. As such, AI models that determine whether "an action, sound or image is harmful or benign" (for example, to root out hate speech) can be trained more quickly. According to the company, that research will help protect people on current services like Facebook and Instagram, as well as in the metaverse.

Along with creating the physical infrastructure and systems to run RSC, Meta said it needed to ensure there were security and privacy controls in place to protect the real-world training data it uses. It says that by using real-world data from its production systems, instead of publicly available data sets, it can more effectively put its research to use by, for instance, identifying harmful content.

This year, Meta plans to increase the number of GPUs in RSC to 16,000. It says that will boost AI training performance by more than 2.5 times. The company, which started working on the project in early 2020, wanted RSC to train AI models on data sets up to an exabyte in size (the equivalent of 36,000 years' worth of high-quality video).

"We expect such a step function change in compute capability to enable us not only to create more accurate AI models for our existing services, but also to enable completely new user experiences, especially in the metaverse," Lee and Sengupta wrote.

Other exascale systems are being built in the US. The delayed Aurora supercomputer at the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory is expected to hit 2 exaflops, while the El Capitan supercomputer, which will manage the country's nuclear stockpile, is expected to top 2 exaflops when it arrives next year.

PC gamers who are looking for a bargain (or a game or two to keep them going until Elden Ring arrives next month) might wish to take a gander at GOG's New Year Sale. There are many repeat deals from the Winter Sale, but it's still worth checking out the discounts, as you can save up to 90 percent on more than 2,500 games. Among them is Cyberpunk 2077, which is 50 percent off at $30.

While the first-person RPG had a notoriously rocky debut, CD Projekt Red has fixed some of the game's many bugs over the last 13 months. The studio plans to roll out the next major update for all platforms by the end of March.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is 80 percent off during the sale. You can pick up one of the most highly regarded RPGs of the last decade for $8. Control Ultimate Edition is down 70 percent to $12 as well. The bundle includes the excellent base game as well as both expansions.

Elsewhere, you can scoop up Metro Exodus: Gold Edition for $14.80 (63 percent off) and Kingdom Come: Deliverance Royal Edition for $12 (70 percent off). These barely scratch the surface of the deals, which include a ton of indie games and franchises like Batman Arkham and Bioshock. You can check out the entire New Year Sale at GOG.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

There have been rumblings for quite some time that Google has been beavering away on its own smartwatch. Rumors last month suggested a Google-branded watch could arrive sometime in 2022, and now we have a slightly clearer idea of when it might debut.

Leaker Jon Prosser said the watch is currently slated to arrive on May 26th, noting that this is "the first we’ve seen a set date on the device behind the scenes." While that seems on the surface like an oddly specific date for something so far away, the timing lines up with the Google I/O developer conference, which usually takes place in May.

As with most smartwatches in the Android ecosystem, the smartwatch is expected to have a circular face, albeit with no physical bezel. It will likely have a heart rate sensor and other features adopted from Fitbit, which Google bought last year. The device could show off the extent of what Wear OS can do and be positioned as an Apple Watch competitor.

The release date isn't set in stone, of course. Nor is the name of the device, despite suggestions that it'll be called Pixel Watch. Still, it's something for Android and Pixel enthusiasts to keep an eye on.

Other rumors suggest a Pixel 6a smartphone is coming in May as well. It's expected to use the same Tensor chipset as the Pixel 6, though Google could ditch the headphone jack in the budget model.

Panasonic could start mass producing larger-capacity batteries for Tesla as soon as next year. The 4680 cell is said to boost the range of electric vehicles by over 15 percent. As Nikkei notes, that could boost the range of the Model S from 650km (404 miles or so) on a single charge to 750km (around 465 miles).

Although the battery is said to be twice as big as previous versions, it has a fivefold increase in energy capacity, according to Nikkei. As such, cars need fewer of the batteries, which are already 10 to 20 percent cheaper to produce. It's estimated that batteries account for 30 percent of the cost of EVs. A cost reduction could make EVs more affordable and hasten the transition to electric vehicles. What's more, a longer range means drivers won't need to charge batteries as often.

Panasonic, a long-time partner of Tesla, is reportedly investing around 80 billion yen ($704 million) on new equipment to produce the 4680. It's said to be expanding an existing plant in Japan and making the batteries there to begin with. Nikkei reports the company will start making the cells on a small scale this year to develop safe and efficient processes before entering mass production in 2023. It may mass produce the batteries in other countries later.

The company confirmed to Reuters that it was setting up a test production line in 2022, though didn't say when it will start making the batteries at a larger scale. "We are studying various options for mass production," it said.

Panasonic started working on the cell following a request from Tesla. The head of Panasonic's battery division said in November that the company hasn't ruled out producing the cell for other automakers, though Tesla is its priority. Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously said that although his company plans to make its own batteries, it would continue to source them from other suppliers.

Tesla announced the 4680 at a Battery Day event in September 2020. At the time, Musk said the cell and other developments could enable Tesla to start selling a $25,000 EV.

New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is continuing to revamp the company's leadership. After removing the chiefs of engineering and design last month, Agrawal is bringing in new leaders for the security team.

The company confirmed to The New York Times that former head of security Peiter Zatko has departed, while chief information security officer Rinki Sethi will leave Twitter in the coming weeks. Agrawal is said to have told employees this week that the personnel decisions were made after “an assessment of how the organization was being led and the impact on top priority work."

Twitter hired Zatko, who's known as "Mudge" in the hacker community, in November 2020 in the wake of an incident that compromised many high-profile accounts. He previously worked at DARPA, Google and Stripe, and was a member of hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow in the '90s.

Sethi, a former IBM vice president of information security, also joined the company in the wake of the July 2020 Bitcoin hack. According to the Times, Twitter's head of privacy engineering Lea Kissner is taking over Sethi's former position on an interim basis.

Agrawal, who was previously chief technical officer, has wasted little time in reshaping Twitter after taking over the top job from Jack Dorsey in late November. The following month, Michael Montano and Dantley Davis, the former engineering and design heads, were ousted in service of "setting Twitter up to hit its goals."

Google has filed a motion to dismiss most of an ad tech-focused antitrust lawsuit brought forward by a group of state attorneys general. It has requested that a federal court dismiss four of the six charges with prejudice, which would prevent them from being brought back to the same court.

"The complaint misrepresents our business, products and motives, and we are moving to dismiss it based on its failure to offer plausible antitrust claims," Adam Cohen, Google's director of economic policy, wrote in a blog post. The company says the plaintiffs failed to provide evidence of wrongdoing for several of their allegations and that much of the suit "is based on outdated information that bears no correlation to our current products or business in this dynamic industry (and in any event never amounted to a violation of antitrust laws)."

The AGs, who are led by Texas AG Ken Paxton, claimed Google abused its power to shore up its position in the online ads market. They said the company agreed a "sweetheart deal" in 2018 that gave Facebook parent Meta a boost in ad header bidding (a type of tech allows publishers to solicit bids from multiple ad exchanges simultaneously) in exchange for support for Google's Open Bidding method of selling ads.

Google said the deal was above board and that it wasn't a secret, as Facebook Audience Network (FAN) was one of several partners for its Open Bidding program. Cohen said the deal "does not provide FAN with an advantage in the Open Bidding auction. FAN competes in the auction just like other bidders: FAN must make the highest bid to win a given impression, period. If another eligible network or exchange bids higher, they win the auction."

The AGs also alleged that Google harnessed at least three programs to manipulate ad auctions. The aim, according to the states, was to push publishers and advertisers into using the company's own tools.

"State Plaintiffs respond to Google’s success by seeking to compel Google to share with its competitors the fruits of its investments and innovation," Google wrote in its filing. "They criticize Google for not designing its products to better suit its rivals’ needs and for making improvements to those products that leave its competitors too far behind. They see the 'solution' to Google’s success as holding Google back, rather than letting market forces urge its competitors forward."

As Reuters notes, the two other charges in the suit are based on state law and were stayed in September. Although Google hasn't asked for those to be dismissed, it reserved the right to make that request at a later date.