Being cast as Batman isn’t the same as being cast as most other characters. There’s a never-ending legacy to it. A long and storied tradition. And that’s something the new Batman, Robert Pattinson, not only is aware of, but relishes. Speaking to Total Film Magazine about the March 4 release of The Batman, Pattinson…
Source: Gizmodo – Robert Pattinson’s Batman Love Was the Reason He Wanted to Play the ‘Freak’
If you’ve noticed that Apple’s two-factor authentication texts include much more extra text than you’re used to, don’t fret — there’s a good reason for it. As Macworldexplains, Apple has implemented a previously proposed system that uses domain-bound codes for sign-ins. The extra tags (such as “@apple.com #123456 %apple.com”) are meant to improve the trustworthiness of autofilling text codes in platforms starting with iOS 14, iPadOS 14 and macOS Big Sur.
The technique theoretically discourages more sophisticated phishing attacks that try to intercept and redirect two-factor verification messages. If you’re using one of those more recent operating systems, you’ll only get a code autofill suggestion if the domain of the site requesting a code matches the one in the text. A phishing site can’t simply prompt Apple for a code and expect an autofill prompt, then. If you don’t get an autofill prompt, there’s a good chance the site is bogus.
Apple quietly started delivering codes in the new format around November 2021. The concept isn’t necessarily limited to Apple’s ecosystem, but it has yet to be widely adopted elsewhere. Still, don’t be surprised if these lengthy 2FA texts become more commonplace and potentially thwart some phishing campaigns.
Source: Engadget – Here’s why your Apple two-factor texts include strange tags
We’ve all been there. You’re on a first date, or in a meeting, or trying to be a considerate airplane passenger—whatever the reason, you’re holding in a fart. Sure, it’s uncomfortable—but could it be dangerous to your health? Could not passing gas cause you to pass away? Could you die by “silent but deadly?” (Okay,…
Source: LifeHacker – Is It Dangerous to Hold in a Fart Too Long?
Sony is reportedly acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion in the latest move of what has been a string of blockbuster purchases within the gaming industry.
Source: Gizmodo – Sony Is Buying Bungie for .6 Billion in Latest Blockbuster Gaming Deal
A championship on the line. A move so cold and calculated it has to be a troll (probably). A vitriolic fanbase armed with keyboards and anonymous screen names. And you thought these sorts of things only happened in video games. But even chess, a turn-based strategy game first released for wooden boards some 1,500…
Source: Kotaku – The Chess World Is Losing Its Mind Over One Grandmaster Potentially Trolling Another
While we are awaiting the stable debut of the new NVIDIA 510 Linux driver series, NVIDIA’s long-lived 470 series driver production branch has been updated…
Source: Phoronix – NVIDIA 470.103.01 Linux Driver Brings RTX 2050 / MX 570 / MX 550 Support
Enlarge (credit: Scott Weady)
You would think that understanding something as common as melting ice would be relatively easy. But water is a peculiar substance, and that makes it very hard to predict how ice will melt. A lot of that unpredictability has been attributed to water flowing around the ice (as seen in sea currents flowing around icebergs, for example).
Still, understanding melting is required to better predict things like the breakup of sea ice. So a group of physicists turned the fluid dynamics up to 11 and have shown that melting ice is weird, even when there are no currents.
The rules that govern the Universe are relatively simple. However, to ensure that the Universe is sufficiently maddening, those simple rules were crafted to produce fluid dynamics and water. Fluid dynamics is the study of how fluids flow.
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Source: Ars Technica – Scalloped iceberg sculptures occur due to the weirdness of water
An international team of scientists says all-female termite colonies from Japan are the result of accidental hybridization, and that their highly robust nature makes them an ecological threat.
Source: Gizmodo – Scientists Figured Out How All-Female Termite Colonies Came to Exist
theodp writes: At the 2022 Winter meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA), Arkansas Governor and NGA Chair ASA Hutchinson called on attendees to rally together to advance K-12 computer science education across the country. The pitch was part of Hutchinson’s year-long CS evangelism initiative, which the NGA notes enjoys the support of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. In video from the event, Hutchinson gives kudos to tech-bankrolled Code.org for pushing the national expansion of K-12 CS, and calls on 35 of his fellow Governors to join their 15 peers who are already members of the Code.org-led advocacy group Govs for CS. In closing, Hutchinson informs the Governors they’ll be asked to sign a compact committing to expanding access to CS education in their states (to be unveiled at NGA’s Summer meeting), and plays a short video that challenges the audience with a question: “Will it be American students who learn to code,” Hutchinson asks, “or will industry be required to go overseas to find the talent that we need here in the United States of America?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Governors Asked To Sign Compact Committing To K-12 CS Expansion
Sony has responded to Microsoft’s record-shattering deal to buy Activision Blizzard with acquisition news of its own, announcing today it plans to buy Destiny 2-maker Bungie for $3.6 billion.
Source: Kotaku – Sony Buys Bungie, Makers of Destiny 2 For .6B
If the company formerly known as Facebook is going to help establish the metaverse, it’s going to need virtual personas that are consistent across its apps — and it now has just that. As of today, Meta is rolling out updated 3D avatars to Facebook, Messenger and Instagram (via DMs and Stories). The new design lets you bring the same avatar across Meta’s platforms, including VR — you can maintain your look as you switch to your Quest 2 and back.
The avatars themselves promise to be truer to your style with more faces, skin tones and expressions. You can also add Cochlear implants, over-the-air hearing aids and wheelchairs. Meta is also being more adventurous with clothing. You can now pick up official NFL apparel (shown above) to flaunt your love of football ahead of the Super Bowl.
You can still create different avatars for Facebook, Instagram and VR, so you can have a more realistic persona for VR meetings and a more fantastical one for your social media profiles. Meta has also promised to “eventually” simplify moving avatars across places, and already lets you sync avatar changes between Facebook and Instagram.
Meta acknowledged the unified avatars were an “early step” in creating the metaverse. This doesn’t suddenly create a truly cohesive and immersive digital space. It’s a start, though. If nothing else, it provides consistency that might encourage you to try an avatar instead of sticking to a favorite photo.
Source: Engadget – Meta’s upgraded 3D avatars work across Facebook, Instagram and VR
Spotify is the leading music streaming service, but its Premium membership might not be for everyone. Maybe you have a better deal with Apple Music or Amazon Prime Music. Maybe you don’t want to support Spotify because of the Joe Rogan fiasco. No matter your reason is, if you’re looking to break up with Spotify, the…
Source: LifeHacker – The Quickest Way to Cancel Spotify Premium and Delete Your Account
Fallout from a devastating tropical storm that hit several countries in southern Africa is building as the death count continues to rise and communities struggle to recover. The death toll from Tropical Storm Ana, which blew through Madagascar, Mozambique, and Malawi last week, stood at nearly 80 on Monday, while…
Source: Gizmodo – A Deadly Cyclone Just Devastated Southeastern Africa—and Another May Be on the Way
Nintendo, known primarily for games, game consoles, and its iconic characters has become so ubiquitous in our worldwide culture that you can barely go into any store without seeing something it has had its hands in.
For Nintendo music is no different, being the place many of the best composers in gaming have had their starts. Unfortunately
Source: Hot Hardware – Buzzkill Nintendo Shuts Down YouTube Soundtrack Party With A Flurry Of Copyright Blocks
“Restartable sequences” are small segments of user-space code designed to
access per-CPU data structures without the need for heavyweight locking.
It is a relatively obscure feature, despite having been supported by the
Linux kernel since the 4.18 release. Among other things, there is no
support in the GNU C Library (glibc) for this feature. That is about to
change with the upcoming glibc 2.35
release, though, so a look at the user-space API
for this feature is warranted.
Source: LWN.net – [$] Restartable sequences in glibc
Pokémon do not mess around in the ancient Hisui region. Life might not be nasty, brutish, and short, but it’s far from breezy in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. That’s especially evident in some of its more RNG-based side-quests, where hard work and determination can’t overcome bad luck. Arceus does a lot right, but forcing…
Source: Kotaku – Pokemon Legends: Arceus Fans Keep Getting Stuck On Its BS Random Monster Quests
Pokémon Legends: Arceus turns the video game series on its head in more ways than one. and from its open-world concept to the redesigned way you interact with wild Pokémon, plenty of these changes are for the better. And one of the biggest isn’t obvious, but might dramatically affect the way you catch Pokémon from…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Catch a Shiny Pokémon Every Time
Enlarge (credit: BOE/Sina.com)
Monitors with high refresh rates are able to depict fast-paced action more smoothly than standard 60 Hz monitors. Today’s screens can go as high as 360 Hz, but BOE, a Chinese electronics company, is working on increasing speeds to 500 Hz. And it has the prototype to prove it.
Today’s PC monitors typically use a thin film transistor (TFT) array made with amorphous silicon, the same type of non-crystalline material found in products like solar cells. According to a report spotted by Tom’s Hardware and Wccftech from a Chinese publication on Sina.com, BOE, whose business includes making display panels for smartphones and tablets for the likes of LG and Apple, has been working on making it more efficient to replace the silicon TFT active layer with an oxide TFT one, allowing the company to make a monitor prototype that can refresh 1920×1080 pixels 500 times per second.
“Oxide semiconductor display technology has the advantages of high mobility, low off-state current, simple process technology, and large size, which can meet the dual needs of future product quality improvement and energy consumption reduction and has become an inevitable trend in technology and market development,” the Sina.com report reads, based on a Chinese-to-English translation by Google.
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Source: Ars Technica – 500 Hz PC monitor prototype is fastest panel ever
XKCD creator Randall Munroe has announced his latest science book: What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, which will delve into new out-of-the-box questions that Munroe attempts to answer with hard scientific facts and research. From a report: What If? 2 follows 2014’s original What If? book — which itself was borne out of an XKCD spinoff blog — that saw Munroe examine absurd questions (like whether you could build a jetpack that ran off downward-facing machine guns or if there’s enough paint to cover the entire surface of the earth) with rigorous scientific accuracy, accompanied by Munroe’s signature stick figure comics. The new volume will continue in What If?’s absurd scientific footsteps, attempting to answer new questions from readers like how you’d ride a fire pole from the moon to Earth, or what would happen if you tried to build a billion-story-high building or solve global warming by having everyone on earth open their freezer doors.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – XCKD’s Randall Munroe Announces What If? 2
Barry any last minute delay(s), it won’t be long now before Valve’s first batch of Steam Deck handhelds begin shipping out—February 25, to be exact. That still gives Valve a few more weeks to test games for launch-day compatibility as part of its Steam Deck Verified program. Valve has already made good progress too, going from having validated
Source: Hot Hardware – Steam Deck Verified Catalog Swells To Over 100 Games As Shipment Date Draws Close
