In space, misplacing a bag of tools is hard to recover from. A tiny mishap during a recent spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) has led to a new object in the night sky, with a tool bag now orbiting Earth ahead of the space station, temporarily taunting the astronauts who dropped it.
Source: Gizmodo – Astronaut Tool Bag Becomes Unexpected Satellite After ISS Spacewalk Slip-Up
Interview With the Vampire attracted plenty of fans during its first season on AMC—but the Anne Rice adaptation saw its audience grow exponentially when the show recently enjoyed a two-month showcase on Max. It might go without saying, but you can expect collaborations of this sort to become even more prevalent in the…
Source: Gizmodo – Max and AMC’s Content-Sharing ‘Experiment’ Is Just the Beginning
Combing through the code of the new version of Google Photos app for Android, some users have found that Google plans to restrict Magic Editor, a feature it unveiled at Google I/O this year, from making certain kinds of edit. AndroidAuthority: Summarizing the strings above, it seems Magic Editor will refuse to edit:
1. Photos of ID cards, receipts, and other documents that violate Google’s GenAI terms.
2. Images with personally identifiable information.
3. Human faces and body parts.
4. Large selections or selections that need a lot of data to be generated.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Google Photos’ Magic Editor Will Refuse To Make Some Edits
Marvel Studios is tapping into the majorly cosmic powers of Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson); Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani); and Photon, Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) by fueling them with the power of family.
Source: Gizmodo – The Marvels’ Nia DaCosta Explains Why She Made a Family-Powered Movie
ByteDance, the China-based company that owns TikTok as well as one of the biggest overseas VR makers, Pico, is taking a long look at its VR headset business, finding that all those metaverse champions were way too “optimistic” in their estimation that virtual reality would take over the world.
Source: Gizmodo – TikTok Owner’s VR Headset Company Pico Lays Off Hundreds of Staff: Report
Enlarge / John Carmack (left) and John Romero (second from right) pose with their id Software colleagues in the early ’90s. (credit: John Romero)
For gamers of a certain age, the ’90s break up of Doom co-creators John Carmack and John Romero is a cultural moment on par with the breakup of The Beatles. Now, as the 30th anniversary of Doom‘s original release approaches next month, the pair has announced plans to come together for a moderated livestreamed discussion of their most famous creation.
The Twitch-streamed event, announced on social media late last week by Romero, will take place on Doom‘s anniversary of December 10. Carmack and Romero will discuss the game and its legacy with moderator and Rocket Jump author David L. Craddock, whom Ars readers might remember from the Long Live Mortal Kombat excerpt that ran on the site last year.
Carmack and Romero reuniting might feel like a historic burying of the hatchet to those who have followed the pair’s story over the decades. But “the two Johns” say that reports of their falling out have been exaggerated over the years, to say the least.
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Source: Ars Technica – Decades after “breakup,” Doom’s Carmack and Romero are rehashing their legacy
Earlier this morning, ESA released the Euclid space telescope’s first scientific images, offering a glimpse into its mission to explore the “dark universe”—the mysterious 95% of the cosmos made up of dark matter and dark energy.
Source: Gizmodo – With Euclid’s First Dazzling Images, Webb Finds a Worthy Rival in Deep Space
An anonymous reader shares an article: In 1937, a brown, eyeless beetle was found in a few caves in Slovenia. The new species was unexceptional apart from one feature. Its discoverer decided to name it after Adolf Hitler. Anophthalmus hitleri has an objectionable sound to modern ears. Nor is it alone. Many species’ names recall individuals or ideas that offend: the butterfly Hypopta mussolinii, for example, while several hundred plant species carry names based on the word caffra which is derived from a racial slur once used in Africa. Similarly Hibbertia, a genus of flowering plants, honours George Hibbert, an English slave owner.
As a result, many scientists are pressing for changes to be made to the international system for giving official scientific names to plants and animals to allow the deletion and substitution of past names if they are deemed objectionable. Current taxonomy regulations, which do not allow such changes, must be altered, they say. Other scientists disagree. Arguing over names that some think are unacceptable while searching for alternatives would waste time and create confusion. Species names should remain inviolate once they have been agreed by taxonomists, they argue, and changes should only be allowed if a mistake in designation has been made or an earlier designation is found to have been overlooked.
The row now threatens to become a major international dispute. “People have very, very strong opinions one way or the other about this,” said botanist Sandra Knapp, of the Natural History Museum in London. “There’s been a certain amount of shouting about it but we have to discuss issues like this. We cannot avoid them.” As a result, Knapp has arranged for a discussion before voting on the issue occurs at the next International Botanical Congress, which will be held in Madrid in July 2024. One motion put forward by a group of botanists calls for a committee to be set up with powers to judge whether scientific names for plants that are now considered unacceptable should be suppressed or changed.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Is It Time To Rethink Naming of Species?
Samsung’s Smart Monitor M80C is one of the more unique monitors on the market, as it blends a 4K display for your computer with the features of a small smart TV and smart home hub. We’ve seen this latest model in the Smart Monitor series go on sale a few times since it arrived in June, but right now the 32-inch M80C is down to $400 at Amazon with an on-page coupon. We could always see a better deal on Black Friday, but for now this is the lowest price we’ve seen and roughly $200 below the display’s average street price in recent months. Other stores like Best Buy, B&H and Samsung.com have the monitor for $100 more (though you can also get it for $400 at Best Buy if you subscribe to the retailer’s My Best Buy Plus service). This deal applies to the white colorway.
You’d buy a Samsung Smart Monitor for its versatility first and foremost. The display comes with a remote and runs on Samsung’s Tizen OS, the same as you’d find on the company’s smart TVs, so you can access streaming apps like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and others without having to turn on your computer. You can also stream cloud games using the Xbox app and Nvidia GeForce Now or beam content directly from an iPhone via AirPlay. The Bixby and Alexa voice assistants are both built in and, since the monitor also works as a SmartThings hub, you can use it to control compatible smart home devices. There’s a detachable webcam and two built-in speakers as well; neither is great, but they should work in a pinch. The whole thing is a relatively minor upgrade over last year’s M80B monitor, though it now has a full-size HDMI port instead of micro-HDMI, plus two USB-A ports and a 65W USB-C port.
That said, this is still a “jack of all trades, master of none” situation. The 4K resolution keeps it sharp, but the M80C is limited to a basic 60Hz refresh rate and lacks local dimming. It’s also a VA panel, which gives the monitor decent contrast but means the image will wash out when viewed from an angle. Other reviews suggest that the M80C can get decently bright, though you shouldn’t expect an especially vibrant picture with HDR content. And while the monitor itself looks clean and supports basic adjustments, this discounted model isn’t VESA-mountable.
All of this means the M80C is a bit of a niche device. If you don’t care about its bonus features, you can find better values in our guides to the best monitors and gaming monitors. You can replicate many of those extra perks directly from a PC, after all. But if you want a monitor that doubles as a small TV for your home office, it should be a decent value at this price.
Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsungs-32-inch-smart-monitor-m80c-is-down-to-400-in-an-early-black-friday-deal-155149266.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Samsung’s 32-inch Smart Monitor M80C is down to 0 in an early Black Friday deal
WeWork filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday, listing nearly $19 billion in debts, according to Bloomberg. The coworking space, once the largest office space tenant in Manhattan, will keep existing offices open, according to its bankruptcy filing.
Source: Gizmodo – Nobody Wants to WeWork Anymore
Chad Stahleski wants to keep Queen’s Highlander music in his reboot. Get new looks at Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon and Godzilla Minus One in new posters. Plus, what’s to come on Fear the Walking Dead, and even more sneak peeks at Doctor Who’s return. Spoilers, away!
Source: Gizmodo – No One Has Any Idea What the Future of John Wick Looks Like Yet
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. government has indicted alleged members of a criminal group that uses insiders at Walmart and other techniques to commit ‘refund fraud’ on a massive scale, according to recently unsealed court records. In short, the scam involves someone ordering an item from, say, Amazon — which in this case says it lost $700,000 — receiving the item, and then using one of various tricks to get their money back from the retailer. The person is then free to sell the item online, and the criminal group takes a fee.
The indictment as well as 404 Media’s own research into refund fraud reveals a professionalized ecosystem of sellers and people providing various services as part of the wide-reaching scam. As well as malicious insiders, refund scammers take advantage of customer service representatives and online retailers’ lax refund policies to get expensive items for free. This is not a crime whose only victims are giant retailers, who may garner little sympathy. Delivery drivers, who already have very difficult jobs, are often dinged for misdelivering or failing to deliver a package, which is something these types of scams often rely on.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – How a ‘Refund Fraud’ Gang Stole 0,000 From Amazon
Enlarge / A view looking down on a test model of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket on its launch pad in French Guiana. (credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/ArianeGroup/Optique video du CSG-S. Martin)
Representatives from 22 European countries reached an agreement Monday to change the way the continent’s rockets are developed, moving from a government-driven approach to a commercial paradigm that appears to be modeled after how NASA and the US military do business.
This is a big moment for the European Space Agency and its member states, which have traditionally funded the lion’s share of rocket development costs since the start of Europe’s launcher programs more than half a century ago. Josef Aschbacher, a scientist who took over as director general of ESA in 2021, has argued that Europe is in an “acute launcher crisis” now that the continent lacks independent launch capability for most of its space missions.
Officials from ESA’s 22 member states met Monday for a Space Summit in Seville, Spain, to decide on several priorities for the space agency. The rocket question was perhaps the most pressing among the topics up for discussion.
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Source: Ars Technica – After the sting of Ariane 6, Europe finally embraces commercial rockets
U.S. chip group Intel is on track to deliver five upgrades to its advanced manufacturing process in four years, CEO Pat Gelsinger said on Tuesday as the company faces pressure to reassure PC and server-making clients that its technology will remain competitive. From a report: Speaking at Intel Innovation Day in Taipei, Gelsinger said the company’s most advanced chip design, the 18A, will move into the test production phase by the first quarter of 2024. “For 18A, we have many test wafers coming out at this moment,” the CEO said. “The invention phase of the 18A is now complete, and now we’re racing to production.”
This production node represents Intel’s big bet to reclaim semiconductor manufacturing leadership by 2025. The company also announced it will use this production technology to make chips for outside customers such as Ericsson, instead of using it only for its own products. Its two biggest rivals, Samsung of South Korea and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., are racing to put their own most advanced chips into production in 2025. These 2-nanometer chips are seen as being at a similar level as Intel’s 18A. Gelsinger said his company has been aggressively pursuing its “five nodes in four years” plan since he returned to the company in 2021. It usually takes at least two years for a chipmaker to move forward to a new production node.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Intel Races To Catch Rivals as AI Boom Supercharges Chip Competition
Enlarge (credit: PM Images/Getty Images)
In July, software engineer Julian Joseph became the latest victim of the tech industry’s sweeping job cuts. Facing his second layoff in two years, he dreaded spending another couple months hunched over his laptop filling out repetitive job applications and blasting them into the void.
Joseph specializes in user interface automation and figured someone must have roboticized the unpleasant task of applying for jobs. Casting about online, he came upon a company called LazyApply. It offers an AI-powered service called Job GPT that promises to automatically apply to thousands of jobs “in a single click.” All he had to fill in was some basic information about his skills, experience, and desired position.
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Source: Ars Technica – AI bots can do the grunt work of filling out job applications for you
Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel takes on a new Kree villain named Dar-Benn in The Marvels.
For whatever reason—superhero fatigue, disappointing performances by Marvel’s last few films, the ongoing Hollywood strikes, or the general depressing state of the world—The Marvels doesn’t seem to have generated the same kind of palpable anticipation that preceded the franchise’s most successful releases. That’s despite a fun, promising trailer back in July. Directed by Nia DaCosta, the movie opens this weekend, and the studio has dropped one last trailer with nods to past Avengers in their battle against Thanos, perhaps to remind us all why we fell in love with the MCU to begin with.
(Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame below.)
As previously reported, Brie Larson and Iman Vellani reprise their respective roles as Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel for the film, along with Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, daughter of Carol/Captain Marvel’s BFF Maria. Monica grew up to become a SWORD agent, but thanks to the events of WandaVision, she can also absorb and manipulate energy as Spectrum. As for Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, she’s a teenage Pakistani American who lives in Jersey City. She’s a major comic books fan, worships Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, and fantasized about becoming a superhero someday. Her powers stem from the Terrigen Mists, released globally in a crossover storyline, the “Inhumanity.” The mists activated dormant Inhuman cells in several people, Kamala included.
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Source: Ars Technica – Final trailer for The Marvels recalls past Avengers as a new threat looms
The stream of new video games seemingly never ends but, for some of us, nothing beats the classics. If you don’t feel like hunting through eBay and local game shops for old cartridges to add to your loved one’s collection, we’ve got some other gift ideas for the nostalgic gamer in your life — from video upscalers for old consoles to retro-themed books and artwork.
Because they’re fun! Or because video game companies have generally had a spotty record of preserving their own history — and (legally) saving art, even in a minuscule way, is important. Or because, deep down, collectors just want to stave off the ceaseless march of time and hang onto any way to relive their youth before it dissipates for good. Or because they’re jaded with modern game design and crave shorter, more distinct or altogether different experiences that aren’t being served by today’s market. Or because they want to flip the games they collect for a quick buck on eBay. Or because… well, you get the idea. — J.D.
To put it simply: supply and demand. Companies aren’t making old games and consoles any more, yet a growing number of gaming enthusiasts want them. And as retro game collecting has grown more popular, sellers have become more acutely aware of how high they can price their goods. Not every retro game costs an arm and a leg, however: Popular games from relatively recent consoles are usually more affordable than lesser-selling titles for older hardware, and you can still find a good bargain every now and then by digging through local yard sales, individual eBay sellers and the like. — J.D.
It depends on how you define “good.” Is it a good idea to buy a bunch of old games in the hopes that their value will skyrocket and make you a tidy profit? No, there’s little rhyme or reason to determining exactly which games will shoot up in value and by how much. There are much safer ways to invest if all you care about are financial returns. Is it a good idea to drop a bunch of cash on 40-year-old video games if you have pressing financial responsibilities? Probably not! But hey, it’s your life. If collecting retro games makes you happy, and you can budget for them within reason, that’s a good thing. Have fun. — J.D.
There’s no set definition for when a video game becomes “retro.” Personally, I think of it as any game that’s at least 10 years old and was originally released on a console that’s two or more generations old (or, for PC games, during that generation). But many others would stretch the timeline back farther, and the growing advent of “live service” games has complicated things. For instance, Grand Theft Auto V was released in 2013, while World of Warcraft arrived in 2004 — are those “retro games” when millions of people still play them today? Maybe not. With games from the ‘90s or earlier, though, the distinction is clearer. — J.D.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-retro-gaming-gifts-2023-holidays-140016461.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The best retro gaming gifts for the 2023 holidays
Enlarge / Behold, a collection of apps we love. (credit: Oscar Wong / Getty Images)
Todoist basically runs my life—but that’s OK, because it’s a very well-designed app. There are a ton of to-do apps on the iPhone, but I went with this one because it’s very flexible.
For example, yeah, you can see a top-to-bottom to-do list like with many others, but you can view that same data as a Trello-like Kanban board, too.
I’ve also found that Todoist is better at understanding natural language settings for projects, times, and so on than a lot of other to-do apps, so, for example, I can type “Edit next article at 2 pm on Tuesday #ArsTechnica” to add a to-do within the Ars Technica project with a due time of 2 pm on the following Tuesday. A lot of to-do apps support that, but I feel Todoist does it best.
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Source: Ars Technica – The Ars Technica staff guide to the mobile apps we can’t live without
Flexible office-space firm WeWork has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing over $18.6 billion of debts in a remarkable collapse for the once high-flying startup co-founded by Adam Neumann and bankrolled by SoftBank, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs. From a report: The New York-based firm, which raised over $22 billion and was valued at $47 billion at its peak, has listed assets of over $15 billion in the petition it filed in a New Jersey federal court.
WeWork chief executive David Tolley said about 90% of the company’s lenders have agreed to convert their $3 billion of debt into equity. WeWork’s bankruptcy filing is limited to locations in the U.S. and Canada, it said. WeWork India has emerged as one of the strongest units in the WeWork franchise, and is largely insulated from the bankruptcy as majority of it is owned by Embassy Group. The India unit makes money and doesn’t need external capital to operate, the India head said in a statement today.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – WeWork Files For Bankruptcy
The American Ornithological Society announced this week that, next year, North American birds named for people will no longer be, as the society seeks to instead name the birds for themselves—and remove any negative human connotations from the domain of avifauna.
Source: Gizmodo – You’ll Have to Learn New Names for These American Birds
