Brace yourself folks, because at long last here come the gaming laptops infused with NVIDIA’s latest generation GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs in mobile form, based on Ampere. Kicking things off, Best Buy is now accepting preorders for an ASUS ROG Zephyrus (GA503QR-211.ZG15) that pairs a Zen 3 CPU with an Ampere GPU.
Before we get to the guts,
Source: Hot Hardware – ASUS ROG Zephyrus With Ryzen 9 5900HS, RTX 3070, 165Hz Display Goes Up For Preorder
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)
In response to Comcast imposing a data cap on Massachusetts residents, state lawmakers have proposed a ban on data caps, new fees, and price increases on home-Internet services for the duration of the pandemic.
The legislation was filed on Tuesday this week by Democratic state representatives Andy Vargas and Dave Rogers. Vargas called the bill a “response to Comcast Internet data cap plans,” while Rogers said the goal is “to push back at Comcast and any other service providers who try to raise prices or fees during a pandemic.” Verizon FiOS and RCN also provide Internet service in Massachusetts but do not impose data caps.
Vargas and Rogers previously led a group of 71 Massachusetts lawmakers who urged Comcast to halt enforcement of its 1.2TB monthly data cap, arguing that the cap hurts low-income people and is unnecessary because of Comcast’s robust network capacity. While Comcast already enforced the data cap in 27 states for several years, the cable company brought the cap to the rest of its territory—an additional 12 states including Massachusetts and the District of Columbia—this month. Comcast is easing-in enforcement so that the first overage charges for newly capped customers will be assessed for data usage in the April 2021 billing period.
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Source: Ars Technica – State reps try to ban Comcast data cap and price hikes until pandemic is over
Stock-trading app Robinhood now faces a class-action lawsuit after it blocked stock purchases of GameStop and other companies favored by Reddit’s WallStreetBets community on Thursday morning.
Source: Gizmodo – Robinhood Sued by Furious GameStop Stockholders
Many years ago, I took a break from studying chemistry in Gainesville, Florida to hang out with my brother who was teaching math in Athens, Georgia. It was the late-ish 2000s, Dottie Alexander was still in of Montreal, and Michael Stipe’s vegetarian restaurant, The Grit, was very popular.
Source: LifeHacker – I’m Obsessed With Air Fried Tofu
Enlarge / Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2017. (credit: Mark Zuckerberg)
The Oversight Board, an independent organization set up to review Facebook’s content moderation decisions, handed down its first batch of rulings on Thursday. The rulings didn’t go well for Facebook’s moderators. Out of five substantive rulings, the board overturned four and upheld one.
Most technology platforms have unfettered discretion to remove content. By contrast, Facebook decided in 2019 to create an independent organization, the Oversight Board, to review Facebook decisions, much as the US Supreme Court reviews decisions by lower courts. The board has an independent funding stream, and its members can’t be fired by Facebook. Facebook has promised to follow the board’s decisions unless doing so would be against the law.
The board’s first batch of five substantive decisions (a sixth case became moot after the user deleted their post) illustrates the difficult challenge facing Facebook’s moderators:
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Source: Ars Technica – Facebook “Supreme Court” overrules company in 4 of its first 5 decisions
In the constant arms race that is the PC gaming peripheral market, Razer believes it’s obtained an edge against its competitors with its latest mouse, the Viper 8K. The peripheral features the company’s second-generation optical switches and 20,000 D…
Source: Engadget – Razer claims the Viper 8K is its most responsive mouse ever
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed a suite of executive orders on climate policy, including one that enshrines climate change as a key consideration for American foreign policy and national security.
Source: Gizmodo – Climate Change Can’t Be an Excuse for More Militarization
Enlarge / Tom Sturridge has snagged the coveted role of Dream, aka Morpheus, in the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman. (credit: DC Comics)
At long last, Netflix has announced several cast members for its hotly anticipated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s award-winning graphic novel series Sandman. As Deadline Hollywood reports, Tom Sturridge (Being Julia, Pirate Radio) snagged the coveted role of Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming, while Game of Thrones alums Gwendoline Christie and Charles Dance will play a gender-swapped Lucifer and the charlatan magician Roderick Burgess, respectively.
(Mild spoilers for the graphic novel series below.)
As we’ve reported previously, the titular “sandman” is Dream, aka Morpheus, among other names. He is one of seven entities known as the Endless, and he is seeking to set right his past mistakes. The other Endless are Destiny, Destruction, Despair, Desire, Delirium, and Death, portrayed as a perky punk/goth young woman. They became almost as popular as Dream himself (especially Death) and were featured in several spinoff comics. The series opens when Morpheus, the King of Dreams, escapes from a 70-year imprisonment by an occultist (who actually wanted to capture Dream’s sibling Death but trapped the Sandman by mistake).
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Source: Ars Technica – GoT alums among announced cast for Netflix Sandman adaptation
Ninja Theory announced today that it will no longer be updating Bleeding Edge with new content, though the game will remain playable on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Source: Kotaku – Bleeding Edge Ceases Updates After 10 Months, Ninja Theory Focusing On Other Projects
Robinhood is already facing a class action lawsuit after the microtrading platform deliberately blocked users from trading GameStop stock as the stock catapulted in value. From a report: The news shows some nearly immediate impact to Robinhood after the snap decision. “Robinhood purposefully, willfully, and knowingly removing the stock ‘GME’ from its trading platform in the midst of an unprecedented stock thereby deprived retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-market and manipulating the open-market,” the class action complaint reads. Fox Business journalist Lydia Moynihan tweeted news of the class action earlier on Wednesday.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Robinhood Hit with Class Action After Blocking GameStop Trades
Being pregnant does not disqualify you from getting the COVID vaccine, whether you’re looking at the CDC’s guidelines or newer ones from the World Health Organization. A few headlines have implied something different, so let’s break down what we know.
Source: LifeHacker – Yes, You Can Get the COVID Vaccine If You’re Pregnant
While it might seem ridiculous for Facebook to accuse any other company of having monopolistic tendencies, apparently the social media giant has spent the past several months preparing for an antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
Source: Gizmodo – It Looks Like Facebook Might Be Gearing Up for a Big Antitrust Battle with Apple
YouTube is finally allowing users to create and share clips from videos. A small number of creators will have access to the clipping tool during the initial test, including some gaming channels. The feature is now available on desktop and Android and…
Source: Engadget – YouTube is testing its own version of Twitch clips
In HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, a barely functional alcoholic with a history of profound trauma finds herself suddenly placed smack dab in the middle of both an FBI investigation and a murder mystery after she wakes up one morning in a hotel—only to find the man she’d hooked up with the night before brutally…
Source: io9 – The Flight Attendant’s Take on Mind Palaces Is the Series’ Surprising Strength
Is the party coming to the end for the “little guys” that banded together to take on some of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street? Earlier this week, we reported on the meteoric rise of GameStop shares (NYSE:GME), which has been fueled by the “degenerates” over at the WallStreetBets subreddit. They then moved on to push AMC Theaters (NYSE:AMC)
Source: Hot Hardware – Robinhood, TD Ameritrade Block Trades Of AMC, GameStop Following Meteoric Rise
There is a wide range of powerful Linux debuggers which will make it very easy to locate weak points or bugs in your applications. Check them out here
Source: LXer – 10 of the Best Linux Debuggers for Software Engineers
Four European apps which secure user data via end-to-end encryption, ProtonMail, Threema, Tresorit and Tutanota, have issued a joint-statement warning over recent moves by EU institutions that they say are setting lawmakers on a dangerous path to backdooring encryption. From a report: Last month the EU Council passed a resolution on encryption that’s riven with contradiction — calling for “security through encryption and security despite encryption” — which the four e2e app makers believe is a thinly veiled call to backdoor encryption. The European Commission has also talked about seeking “improved access” to encrypted information, writing in a wide-ranging counter-terrorism agenda also published in December that it will “work with Member States to identify possible legal, operational, and technical solutions for lawful access.” Simultaneously, the Commission has said it will “promote an approach which both maintains the effectiveness of encryption in protecting privacy and security of communications, while providing an effective response to crime and terrorism.” And it has made it clear there will be no ‘one silver bullet’ as regards the e2e encryption security ‘challenge.’ But such caveats are doing nothing to alleviate the concerns of e2e encrypted app makers — who are convinced proposals from the Council of the EU, which is involved in adopting the bloc’s laws (though the Commission usually drafts legislation), sums to an push toward backdoors.
“While it’s not explicitly stated in the resolution, it’s widely understood that the proposal seeks to allow law enforcement access to encrypted platforms via backdoors,” the four app makers write, going on to warn that such a move would fatally underline the security EU institutions also claim to want to maintain. “The resolution makes a fundamental misunderstanding: Encryption is an absolute, data is either encrypted or it isn’t, users have privacy or they don’t,” they go on. “The desire to give law enforcement more tools to fight crime is obviously understandable. But the proposals are the digital equivalent of giving law enforcement a key to every citizen’s home and might begin a slippery slope towards greater violations of personal privacy.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – ProtonMail, Threema, Tresorit and Tutanota Warn EU Lawmakers Over ‘Anti-Encryption’ Push
Asus Zephyrus 15.6″ Gaming Laptop | $1,800 | Pre-Order at Best Buy
Source: Gizmodo – You Can Now Pre-Order the New RTX 3070-Powered Asus ROG Zephyrus 15.6″ Laptop From Best Buy
What’s better than one tab bar? Two, obviously.
Source: Gizmodo – Vivaldi Delivers Two-Level Tab Stacking Feature for Tab Hoarders
Facebook has reportedly been preparing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple for months, centering around an allegation that the company is forcing developers to follow App Store rules that its own apps don’t have to abide by. According to The Informati…
Source: Engadget – Facebook is reportedly preparing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple
