Earlier this week League of Legends players voted “overwhelmingly” to strike over plans to make rule changes that would cut the North American Challenger’s League—which only launched last year—from 16 teams to seven.
Source: Kotaku – Riot Threatens To Cancel Entire Esports Season If Striking League Of Legends Players Can’t Reach Deal
Nitrux 2.8.1 brings the latest and greatest Linux 6.3 kernel series, Plasma Wayland as the default session, and the latest KDE software.
The post Nitrux 2.8.1 Released With Linux Kernel 6.3, Plasma Wayland appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Nitrux 2.8.1 Released With Linux Kernel 6.3, Plasma Wayland
Rayark, the developers of the excellent Cytus rhythm action games (which we’ve covered previously), have this week faced allegations that some of the company’s artists had been laid off and replaced with, you guessed it, machine-generated imagery.
Source: Kotaku – Studio Denies Laying Off Artists For AI After Fans Spot Character With Six Fingers
Offensive Security announced today a new release of their popular ethical hacking and penetration testing GNU/Linux distribution that brings new features, updated and new tools, and many improvements, Kali Linux 2023.2.
Source: LXer – Kali Linux 2023.2 Brings PipeWire Support to Xfce Edition, Overhauls i3 Desktop
There’s a lot of great new releases coming out of big studios, including an absolutely massive Magic: The Gathering set in collaboration with Lord of the Rings, but I’m really excited for the indie games that are starting to get delivered as Zine Quest rewards. Here are more indie releases for you to check out!
Source: Gizmodo – Don Your Aether-Armor With the Gaming Shelf
In 2021, YouTube made the controversial decision to hide dislike counts on its platform, citing the aim of protecting creators from harassment. While this removed a valuable metric for viewers, alternatives have emerged, such as the browser extension Return YouTube Dislike and the new site Favoree. The latter is being hailed as “the Rotten Tomatoes of YouTube,” where users can rate and review YouTube channels. BGR reports: Earlier this week, one user disappointed with the removal of YouTube’s dislike counts took to Reddit to promote their new site Favoree. Rather than simply giving a channel a thumbs up or thumbs down, you can give it a rating out of five stars and even write a review. That way, you can actually see why people like or dislike a given channel.
This is a new site, so only a small handful of YouTube channels are currently represented (much less have many ratings or reviews) […]. For example, Summoning Salt is a stellar channel a friend turned me on to a few years ago, which features long-form documentary-style videos about the history of speedrunning video games. The channel page on Favoree features a short description, a list of relevant keywords, embedded videos, and several written reviews.
Obviously, this is only going to work if Favoree really picks up steam and thousands of users start writing reviews and submitting new channels. That said, it’s an interesting project, and the creator is accepting feedback on Reddit and acting on many of those suggestions rather quickly. It will be interesting to track Favoree to see how it develops.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – ‘The Rotten Tomatoes of YouTube’
Odds are high that, you a Kotaku reader, have played Tetris before. In fact, you’ve likely played a lot of Tetris or one of its many clones and knock-offs. But you’ve probably never played a Tetris-inspired game quite like Setris, a new take on the popular puzzler that adds physics and satisfying, shifting sand to the…
Source: Kotaku – Tetris (But With Sand) Is Incredibly Satisfying
Last October, Elon Musk closed on a deal to purchase Twitter for a whopping $44 billion. At the time, it was a price-tag that many estimated to be way too much money. Musk, himself, admitted that he and his co-investors may have overpaid for the social media platform. Nevertheless, he soldiered on with the…
Source: Gizmodo – Fidelity: Twitter is Now Only Worth a Third of What Elon Musk Paid for It
Warner Bros. and DC Studios’ The Flash has faced a long journey to get to the screen, with various filmmakers attached at various times to take on the Flashpoint-inspired story. A constant throughout, however, has been star Ezra Miller, who remained part of the project despite some very public legal troubles.
Source: Gizmodo – The Flash Director Feels No One But Ezra Miller Can Play the Speedster
Asus has introduced a new flagship RTX 4090 graphics card that uses an all-in-one liquid cooling system combined with liquid metal thermal interface. Dubbed the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090, Asus says that its advanced cooler combined with extremely efficient thermal interface will ensure the maximum boost clocks possible, with Asus taking clear aim of producing the fastest gaming graphics card on the market.
Proper power delivery and efficient cooling are main ways to enable consistently high CPU and GPU performance these days, so when designing its ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090, the company used its own proprietary printed circuit board (PCB) with an advanced voltage regulating module (VRM). Meanwhile cooling is being provided by an all-in-one liquid cooling system that removes heat not only from GPU, but also from memory and VRM, exhausting that heat via the attached “extra-thick” 360mm radiator.
But Asus says that its ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 has a secret ingredient that its rivals lack: liquid metal thermal interface material (TIM) that ensures superior heat transfer from hot components to cooling systems.
Asus does not disclose what type of liquid metal TIM it uses for graphics cards (it uses ThermalGrizzly’s Conductonaut Extreme for some laptops), bus usually such thermal interfaces are made from gallium or gallium alloys, which are liquid at or near room temperature and are great conductors of heat.
But there are also some risks and challenges associated with using liquid metal thermal interfaces. Firstly, they are electrically conductive, which means that if the material spills or is not properly contained, it could cause a short circuit. Secondly, these materials can be corrosive to certain metals like aluminum. Thirdly, applying liquid metal can be more complicated than using other types of thermal paste, requiring careful handling and precision.
Asus says that it has been using liquid metal TIMs in its laptops for years, so using them for graphics cards does not seem to be a big challenge for the company.
Image Credit: Future/TechRadar
Asus is not disclosing the complete specifications of the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 for the moment, but it certainly hopes to make the graphics card the world’s fastest. It remains to be seen whether the product will indeed be the fastest out-of-box, but it will certainly offer a noteworthy overclocking potential when compared to regular GeForce RTX 4090 graphics boards with regular coolers.
The Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 will be a limited-edition card available for sale in Q3.
Source: AnandTech – Asus Details ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090: Liquid Cooling Meets Liquid Metal
Enlarge / On May 22, John Timmer (left) moderated a panel featuring Karin Bok (center) and Nathaniel Wang (right) for the Ars Frontiers 2023 session titled, “Beyond COVID: What Does mRNA Technology Mean for Disease Treatment?” (credit: Ars Technica)
The world of biomedicine has developed a lot of technology that seems a small step removed from science fiction, but the public isn’t aware of much of it. mRNA-based vaccines, though, were a big exception as a lot of the public tracked the technology’s development as a key step toward emerging from the worst of the pandemic and then received the vaccines in droves.
mRNA technology has a lot of potential applications beyond COVID, and we talked a bit about those during the “Beyond COVID: What Does mRNA Technology Mean for Disease Treatment?” panel at last week’s Ars Frontiers event. We’ve archived the panel on YouTube; if you want to focus on the discussion about mRNA therapies, you can start at the 1-hour, 55-minute mark.
mRNA is a nucleic acid molecule that instructs the cell to make specific proteins. When used as vaccines, the instructions call for a protein produced by a pathogen, such as a virus. “It helps put up a wanted poster for the immune system,” was how Nathaniel Wang, co-founder and CEO of Replicate Bioscience put it.
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Source: Ars Technica – mRNA technology for vaccines and more: An Ars Frontiers recap
Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has begun her 11-year prison sentence after being convicted of four counts of fraud. The BBC reports: She will serve her term in a minimum-security prison in Texas. Holmes reported to the federal facility in Bryan, Texas, which holds between 500 and 700 inmates at any given time, on Tuesday. It is about 100 miles (160km) north of Houston, her hometown. Her arrival at the facility was confirmed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which declined to give any more details about her confinement, citing privacy concerns.
There, the woman once billed as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire might work alongside other inmates for between 12 cents (10p) and $1.15 (93p) an hour – much of which will go towards her court-mandated restitution payments. […] The Texas prison camp where Holmes will serve time is a sprawling 37-acre facility. Most inmates there have been convicted of non-violent crimes, low-level drug dealing or white-collar offenses. According to the facility’s handbook, life largely revolves around work and extracurricular activities that include foreign language, computer literacy or business courses.
Holmes had fought to stay out of prison while her legal appeal works its way through the courts. She argued a delay would allow her to raise “substantial questions” about the case that could warrant a new trial. Her defense team also argued that she should remain free to care for her children, one who is nearly two and the other three months old. The Wall Street Journal reported the prison has facilities where inmates can host gatherings and where children can play. Holmes and other mothers are allowed to hold their children in their lap and breastfeed their infants, according to official Bureau of Prison guidelines.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes Begins 11-Year Prison Sentence
He did it with Saw, he did it with The Conjuring, and now producer James Wan is expanding Insidious too. Even though the franchise’s fifth film, Insidious: The Red Door, is hitting theaters this summer, the next installment of the Insidious series is already gearing up. It’s called Thread: An Insidious Tale and it’ll…
Source: Gizmodo – Insidious Is Expanding With a Spinoff Starring Mandy Moore and Kumail Nanjiani
I was collecting boar tusks for an enterprising child in rain-soaked Scosglen, one of Diablo IV’s five major regions, when it hit me: I don’t have time for this shit.
Source: Kotaku – I Put Dozens Of Hours Into Diablo IV And I’m Only 20 Percent Done
2023 is barely halfway over and yet this year has already seenh great games coming out across nearly every platform. And upcoming releases are shaping up to be bangers, too.
Source: Kotaku – 2023 Already Has More Great Games Than 2022
MX Linux pays homage to its origins with a logo revamp, unveiling the highly anticipated MX-23 “Libretto” public beta.
The post MX Linux’s Refreshed Identity: Get Ready for MX-23 ‘Libretto’ appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – MX Linux’s Refreshed Identity: Get Ready for MX-23 ‘Libretto’
Corsair has introduced its new Dominator Titanium series of DDR5 memory modules that will combine performance, capacity, and style. The new lineup of memory modules and kits will offer DRAM kits up to 192 GB in capacity at data transfer rates as high as DDR5-8000.
The Dominator Titanium DIMMs are based on cherry-picked memory chips and Corsair’s own printed circuit boards to ensure signal quality and integrity. Also, these PCBs are supplemented with internal cooling planes and external thermal pads that transfer heat to aluminum heat spreaders, with an aim on keeping the heavily overclocked DRAM sufficiently cooled.
With regards to performance, the retail versions of the Titanium kits will run at speeds ranging from DDR5-6000 to DDR5-8000. Which, at the moment, would make the top-end SKUs of the highest clocked DDR5 RAM on the market. Corsair is also promissing kits with CAS latencies as low as CL30, though absent a full product matrix, it’s likely those kits will be clocked lower. The DIMMs come equipped with AMD’s EXPO (AMD version) and Intel’s XMP 3.0 (Intel version) SPD profiles for easier overclocking.
As for capacity, the Titanium DIMMs will be available in 16GB, 24GB, 32GB, and 48GB configurations, allowing for kits ranging from 32GB (2 x 16GB) up to 192GB (4x 48GB). Following the usual rule curve for DDR5 memory kits, we’ll wager that DDR5-8000 kits won’t be avaialble in 192GB capacities – even Intel’s DDR5 memory controller has a very hard time with running 4 DIMMs anywhere near that fast – so we’re expecting that the fastest kits will be limited to smaller capacities; likely 48GB (2 x 24GB).
Corsair is not disclosing whose memory chips it uses for its Dominator Titanium memory modules, but there is a good chance that it uses Micron’s latest generation of DDR5 chips, which are available in both 16Gbit and 24Gbit capacities. Micron was the first DRAM vendor to publicly start shipping 24Gbit DRAM chips, so they are the most likely candidate for the first 24GB/48GB DIMMs such as Corsair’s. And if that’s the case, that would mark an interesting turn-around for Micron; the company’s first-generation DDR5 modules are not known for overclocking very well, which is why we haven’t been seeing them on current high-end DDR5 kits.
Image Credit: Future/TechRadar
Corsair has also taken into account aesthetic preferences by incorporating 11 addressable Capellix RGB LEDs into the modules. Users can customize and control these LEDs using Corsair’s iCue software. For those favoring minimalism, Corsair offers separate Fin Accessory Kits. These kits replace the RGB top bars with fins, bringing a classic look reminiscent of the original Dominator memory.
While Corsair’s new Dominator Titanium memory modules are already very fast, to commemorate their debut Corsair plans to release a limited run of First-Edition kits. These exclusive kits will feature even higher clocks and tighter timings – likely running at DDR5-8266 speeds, which Corsair is showing off at Computex. Corsair intends to offer only 500 individually numbered First-Edition kits.
Corsair plans to start selling its Dominator Titanium kits in July. Pricing will depend on market conditions, but expect these DIMMs to carry a premium price tags.
Source: AnandTech – Corsair Unveils Dominator Titanium DDR5 Kits: Reaching For DDR5-8000
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A lawyer is in trouble after admitting he used ChatGPT to help write court filings that cited six nonexistent cases invented by the artificial intelligence tool. Lawyer Steven Schwartz of the firm Levidow, Levidow, & Oberman “greatly regrets having utilized generative artificial intelligence to supplement the legal research performed herein and will never do so in the future without absolute verification of its authenticity,” Schwartz wrote in an affidavit (PDF) on May 24 regarding the bogus citations previously submitted in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Schwartz wrote that “the use of generative artificial intelligence has evolved within law rms” and that he “consulted the artificial intelligence website ChatGPT in order to supplement the legal research performed.” The “citations and opinions in question were provided by ChatGPT which also provided its legal source and assured the reliability of its content,” he wrote. Schwartz admitted that he “relied on the legal opinions provided to him by a source that has revealed itself to be unreliable,” and stated that it is his fault for not confirming the sources provided by ChatGPT. Schwartz didn’t previously consider the possibility that an artificial intelligence tool like ChatGPT could provide false information, even though AI chatbot mistakes have been extensively reported by non-artificial intelligence such as the human journalists employed by reputable news organizations. The lawyer’s affidavit said he had “never utilized ChatGPT as a source for conducting legal research prior to this occurrence and therefore was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.”
Federal Judge Kevin Castel is considering punishments for Schwartz and his associates. In an order on Friday, Castel scheduled a June 8 hearing at which Schwartz, fellow attorney Peter LoDuca, and the law firm must show cause for why they should not be sanctioned. “The Court is presented with an unprecedented circumstance,” Castel wrote in a previous order on May 4. “A submission filed by plaintiff’s counsel in opposition to a motion to dismiss is replete with citations to non-existent cases… Six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations.” […] In the order issued on Friday last week, Castel said that Schwartz may be sanctioned for “the citation of non-existent cases to the Court,” “the submission to the Court of copies of non-existent judicial opinions,” and “the use of a false and fraudulent notarization.” Schwartz may also be referred to an attorney grievance committee for additional punishment. Castel wrote that LoDuca may be sanctioned “for the use of a false and fraudulent notarization in his affidavit filed on April 25, 2023.” The law firm could be sanctioned for “the citation of non-existent cases to the Court,” “the submission to the Court of copies of non-existent judicial opinions annexed to the Affidavit filed on April 25, 2023,” and “the use of a false and fraudulent notarization in the affidavit filed on April 25, 2023.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Lawyer Cited 6 Fake Cases Made Up By ChatGPT; Judge Calls It ‘Unprecedented’
Enlarge / A colorful, textured bi-layer film made from plant-based materials cools down when it’s in the sun. (credit: Qingchen Shen)
Summer is almost here, bringing higher temperatures and prompting many of us to crank up the air conditioning on particularly hot days. The downside to A/C is that the units gobble up energy and can emit greenhouse gases, contributing further to global warming. Hence, there is strong interest in coming up with eco-friendly alternatives. Scientists from the University of Cambridge have developed an innovative new plant-based film that gets cooler when exposed to sunlight, making it ideal for cooling buildings or cars in the future without needing any external power source. They described their work at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society.
The technical term for this approach is passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC), so named because it doesn’t require an injection of energy into the system to disperse heat. The surface emits its own heat into space without being absorbed by the air or atmosphere, thereby becoming several degrees cooler than the surrounding air without needing electrical energy.
“We know there is spontaneous thermal transfer between objects with different temperatures,” Qingchen Shen said at a press conference during the meeting. Their cooling technology exploits that thermal transfer, with a twist. Most PDRC materials (paints, films, and so forth) are white, or have a mirrored finish, to achieve a broadband reflection of sunlight. Pigments or dyes interfere with that since they absorb specific wavelengths of light and only reflect certain colors, thereby transforming energy from the light into heat. The films created by Shen et al. are colored, but it is structural color in the form of nanocrystals, not due to adding pigments or dyes. So color can be added without sacrificing the passive cooling efficiency.
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Source: Ars Technica – Beating the heat: These plant-based iridescent films stay cool in the sun
