Tech news roundup - September 16th, 2023

This is the first edition of Quest for Code's Tech news roundup! Stability.ai announced Stable Audio.

Stable audio

Stability.ai announced Stable Audio, an AI-tool to generate music and sound effects. The tool can be used for free in non-commercial projects. For commercial projects, you need one of the two commercial licenses currently available: Professional or Enterprise. The Professional tier costs $11.99 a month (excluding taxes). Enterprise license is more tailored, and you would need to get in touch with Stability.ai to make a deal for that one.

The free tier allows you to create 20 tracks a month, and the track length is only 45 seconds. The length limitation sounds rather restricting, but hey, it’s free!

The model has been trained with music from AudioSparx. According to Stable Audio’s FAQ, they are planning to open source a music generation model soon.

iPhone 15

Apple introduced iPhone 15 - and no one is surprised. This new lineup will transition from Lightning port to USB-C. Which is good news for people like me, who don’t like clutter on your desk. One cable less to worry about.

RustRover

JetBrains introduced RustRover: a IDE for Rust. The preview version can be downloaded now here. Personally, I prefer JetBrains IDE when I’m developing for Java, so in my ears this is very good news.

Rust is gathering traction mostly as an replacement for C++, and Quest for Code will be covering rust in the near future for sure.

Playstation Plus price hike

Playstation is raising the price of all tiers of Playstation Plus. The new prices are:

• PlayStation Plus Essential 12-Month Subscription
  79.99 USD | 71,99 Euro | 59.99 GBP | 6,800 Yen

• PlayStation Plus Extra 12-Month Subscription
  134.99 USD | 125,99 Euro | 99.99 GBP | 11,700 Yen

• PlayStation Plus Premium 12-Month Subscription
  159.99 USD | 151,99 Euro | 119.99 GBP | 13,900 Yen

The price hike is Essentially Extra Premium (puns intended if you didn’t get it), since for example the 12-Month Essential tier used to cost 59,95 Euro, and now it is 71,99 Euro.