Netflix is already queuing up more big budget streaming fare with the Russo Brothers after their upcoming action release The Gray Man. This time they’re enlisting Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown to lead an adaptation of Electric State. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed the news, noting that Chris Pratt is also…
Source: Gizmodo – Millie Bobbie Brown to Star in the Russo Brothers’ Electric State
The UK’s Intellectual Property Office has decided artificial-intelligence systems cannot patent inventions for the time being. The BBC reports: A recent IPO consultation found many experts doubted AI was currently able to invent without human assistance. Current law allowed humans to patent inventions made with AI assistance, the government said, despite “misperceptions” this was not the case. Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled against Stephen Thaler, who had said his Dabus AI system should be recognized as the inventor in two patent applications, for: a food container [and] a flashing light. The judges sided, by a two-to-one majority, with the IPO, which had told him to list a real person as the inventor. “Only a person can have rights – a machine cannot,” wrote Lady Justice Laing in her judgement. “A patent is a statutory right and it can only be granted to a person.” But the IPO also said it would “need to understand how our IP system should protect AI-devised inventions in the future” and committed to advancing international discussions, with a view to keeping the UK competitive.
Many AI systems are trained on large amounts of data copied from the internet. And, on Tuesday, the IPO also announced plans to change copyright law to allow anyone with lawful access – rather than only those conducting non-commercial research, as now — to do this, to “promote the use of AI technology, and wider ‘data mining’ techniques, for the public good.” Rights holders will still be able to control and charge for access to their works but no longer charge extra for the ability to mine them.
In the consultation, the IPO noted the UK was one of only a handful of countries to protect computer-generated works with no human creator. The “author” of a “computer-generated work” is defined as “the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken,” it says. And protection lasts for 50 years from when the work is made. Performing-arts workers’ union Equity had called for copyright law to be changed to protect actors’ livelihoods from AI content such as “deepfakes,” generated from images of their face or voice. The IPO took this issue seriously, it said, but “at this stage, the impacts of AI technologies on performers remain unclear.” “We will keep these issues under review,” it added.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – UK Decides AI Still Cannot Patent Inventions
Enlarge / Sony’s InZone monitors use a “low-depth tripod stand” to provide more room for other peripherals, Sony said in its video announcement. (credit: Sony/YouTube)
Known for everything from TVs to cameras and smartphones, Sony is getting into gaming peripherals, it announced Tuesday. Sony’s new InZone brand will include a pair of monitors, plus wireless and wired headsets aimed at PC and, naturally, PlayStation gamers.
Sony isn’t likely a name you think of when going PC monitor shopping. It hasn’t made consumer monitors since the early 2000s, though it has continued to sell expensive, chunky professional monitors for broadcast and production. That changes with the flagship Sony inZone M9 and its sibling, the InZone M3.
The M9, never to be confused with the Samsung M8 4K smart monitor announced in March, is a 27-inch 4K HDR monitor with a 144 Hz refresh rate. Its most interesting feature, however, is its LED backlight with full-array local dimming (FALD), which—along with VESA DisplayHDR 600 certification and 95 percent claimed DCI-P3 coverage—is particularly appealing for HDR users.
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Source: Ars Technica – Sony finally releases a 4K monitor you might actually want
Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 is almost upon us, and with that comes an onslaught of creative brand tie-ins and merch to celebrate. Since the release of Vol. 1 a number of brands have incorporated the Netflix series onto an assortment of goods, including ‘80s-style toys and character-inspired fashions, which make sense, to…
Source: Gizmodo – The Strangest Stranger Things Things You Can Buy
Hector Martin who has been leading the Asahi Linux effort for bringing up Linux on Apple Silicon recently received his new 2022 MacBook Pro 13-inch to begin porting Linux to Apple’s new M2 SoC. While only started this week, he’s already making significant progress. Fortunately, much of the existing M1-written Linux code can work for the M2 but some new drivers will need to be written before the new M2 Macs are fully usable on Linux…
Source: Phoronix – Apple M2 Enablement For Linux Begins With Good Progress
After the big announcement earlier this month that Mozilla Thunderbird is coming to Android devices, the project released today Mozilla Thunderbird 102 as the first major new series of the popular email client almost a year after the release of Mozilla Thunderbird 91.
Highlights of Mozilla Thunderbird 102 include a new address book that supports importing of contacts in the vCard format, refreshes the design of the contact cards with new contact entries, and makes it a lot easier to navigate and interact with your contacts.
The post Mozilla Thunderbird 102 Released with New Address Book, Import/Export Wizard appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Mozilla Thunderbird 102 Released with New Address Book, Import/Export Wizard
Russian lawmakers on Tuesday approved a draft law that would potentially exempt issuers of digital assets and cryptocurrencies from value-added tax. Reuters reports: Unprecedented Western sanctions have hit the heart of Russia’s financial system over events in Ukraine and lawmakers have scrabbled to bring in new legislation to soften the blow. The draft law, approved by State Duma members in the second and third readings on Tuesday, envisages exemptions on value-added tax for issuers of digital assets and information systems operators involved in their issue. It also establishes tax rates on income earned from the sale of digital assets.
The current rate on transactions is 20%, the same as for standard assets. Under the new law, the tax would be 13% for Russian companies and 15% for foreign ones. The draft must still be reviewed by the upper house and signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Russian Parliament Approves Tax Break For Issuers of Digital Assets
Enlarge / It’s not a Razer device unless it’s posed next to a bunch of custom RGB lighting, right? In great news, the Razer Kishi V2 includes zero glaring lights, which we prefer here at Ars Technica. (credit: Razer)
In the years since the phrase “don’t you people have phones” became a Blizzard-mocking meme, I’ve found myself honestly playing more video games on my smartphone. (But not Diablo Immortal, which spawned the meme.) In particular, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Google Stadia, and other cloud-gaming services have shined as options on my phone when Wi-Fi or 5G reception is decent.
While select games on these services have on-screen buttons as options, I won’t play with anything less than a physical gamepad. Until this month, I relied on a standard, slim 8Bitdo gamepad, especially when traveling, but this required a phone-to-gamepad plastic harness—and, gosh, those things fall apart when tossed into my bags. There’s gotta be something better, right?
Enter the Razer Kishi V2. At the somewhat steep price of $100, this clamp-to-your-phone gamepad is not a slam-dunk recommendation for anyone who doesn’t regularly play console-styled games on their phone. But it gets closer to earning that value than Kishi’s 2020 version.
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Source: Ars Technica – Review: Razer Kishi V2 refines the “gamepad that clamps to phone” concept
The KDE Project announced today Plasma 5.25.2 as the second point release to the latest and greatest KDE Plasma 5.25 desktop environment series to address more bugs and crashes, but also to improve some functionality.
Source: LXer – KDE Plasma 5.25.2 Released to Improve Flatpak Support, Present Windows Effect
After years of grumbling from Republicans in Congress, Google has requested that the Federal Election Commission allow a pilot program in which political campaign emails would be exempt from spam filtering.
Source: Gizmodo – Spam Alert: Google Asks Feds for Permission to Flood Inboxes With Campaign Emails
Tesla has reportedly laid off approximately 200 workers from its Autopilot team and closed an office in California. According to Bloomberg, the company notified staff of the move on Tuesday. Many of the affected employees were annotation specialists whose jobs involved evaluating and labeling Autopilot data obtained from customers. Along with the layoffs, Tesla closed its San Mateo location; Bloomberg reports what remained of the 350-person team was transferred to another nearby office.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. The automaker has not operated a public relations department since 2020.
The cuts are almost certainly part of a broader effort by Tesla CEO Elon Musk to reduce costs at the company ahead of a potential recession. At the start of June, Musk told employees in a company-wide email he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and that layoffs were coming. He later told Bloomberg he planned to reduce Tesla’s salaried workforce by about 10 percent over the next three months. The admission came after Musk told remote workers to return to the office or lose their jobs. Tesla reportedly bungled its back-to-office plan, with The Information reporting that many employees returned to the company’s Fremont facility to find there weren’t enough parking spots and desks.
Source: Engadget – Tesla reportedly lays off 200 Autopilot employees in latest jobs cut
Coming just one week after the KDE Plasma 5.25.1 point release, the KDE Plasma 5.25.2 update is here to improve support for Flatpak apps. Learn more here.
The post KDE Plasma 5.25.2 Released to Improve Flatpak Support appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – KDE Plasma 5.25.2 Released to Improve Flatpak Support
Maybe I’ve been living in a subterranean bunker waiting for the radiation to go away but I somehow missed that the long-awaited Fallout TV adaptation was moving ahead. Earlier this year, both Walton Goggins (Justified) and Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets) were cast on the show and now Twin Peaks, Dune, and Blue Velvet …
Source: Gizmodo – Amazon’s Fallout Show Gets a Slice of Twin Peaks
A new law recently passed in Quebec, Canada designed to force immigrants to learn and use French in a short amount of time has many game developers in the area worried. The new bill could make it harder for studios to recruit and keep talent in a part of Canada that contains numerous big game studios and companies.
Source: Kotaku – New Quebec French Language Law Has Game Devs Fearful Of The Future
According to the National Resources Defense Council, up to 40% of the food in the United States is never eaten. A lot of factors contribute to that reality: restaurants cook more food than they’re able to sell in a day; grocery stores overstock their shelves to create the appearance of abundance; farmers can’t always…
Source: LifeHacker – The Five Best Apps for Cheap and Discounted Groceries
A cybercrime gang claims that it recently stole 450 gigabytes of data from global chipmaker AMD by merely guessing employees’ terrible passwords.
Source: Gizmodo – A Hacker Gang Claims It Stole AMD’s Data. Were Bad Passwords Responsible?
Enlarge / The Space Launch System rocket will be back to the Vehicle Assembly Building this week. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)
The US space agency has spent a long, long time designing, developing, building, and testing the Space Launch System rocket. When NASA created the rocket program in 2010, US legislators said the SLS booster should be ready to launch in 2016.
Of course, that launch target and many others have come and gone. But now, after more than a decade and more than $20 billion in funding, NASA and its litany of contractors are very close to declaring the 111-meter tall rocket ready for its debut launch.
On June 20, NASA successfully counted the rocket down to T-29 seconds during a pre-launch fueling test. Although they did not reach T-9 seconds, as was the original goal, the agency’s engineers collected enough data to satisfy the requisite information to proceed toward a launch.
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Source: Ars Technica – NASA aims to launch the SLS rocket in just 2 months
You know the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the popular NFT collection that has enticed the likes of Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon? Well, the company behind the collection, Yuga Labs, is suing an artist they believe is trying to devalue the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The first rule of Bored Ape Yacht Club: Do not…
Source: Gizmodo – ‘No Mere Monkey Business:’ Bored Ape Maker Accuses Conceptual Artist of Trademark Infringement
After a massive $625 million hack, the cryptocurrency pay-to-earn game Axie Infinity is once again open for business. The hack took advantage of flaws in the Ronin network, an Ethereum sidechain the game’s owner, Sky Mavis, propped up to facilitate faster transactions. Surprisingly, the news today is that Axie Infinity will… continue to use Ronin, which has been revived after a few audits. In a blog post, the company described a new “circuit-breaker” system designed to flag “large, suspicious withdrawals,” withdrawal limits and human reviewers. It also promised players that a new land staking feature — which claims to allow the game’s owners of digital land to earn passive income — will be released later this week.
In March, a group of hackers pilfered nearly 173,600 Ethereum and nearly 26 million USDC (worth roughly $26 million) from the game’s network. US officials have since linked the North Korean-backed hacking group Lazarus to the heist. Last week Sky Mavis said it would begin reimbursing the victims of the hack — but didn’t account for Ethereum’s drop in value over the past three months, which means that users would only recover about a third of their losses. In all, Sky Mavis is returning $216.5 million in funds to its users.
Moving forward, Axie Infinity players are warned not to send funds directly to Ronin Bridge’s smart contract address. “The Ronin Bridge should only be accessed and used for deposits/withdrawals through the Ronin Bridge UI. Any funds sent directly to the Ronin Bridge’s contract addresses will be permanently lost,” wrote the company in its post.
Esports.net recently pointed out a flaw in Axie Infinity’s design — a drop in the number of players causes the value of its in-game currency to plummet. Bloomberg noted earlier this month that the game’s user base has declined by 40 percent since the hack. As of this writing, the value of AXS is at $15.30 (a drop from its high of $160.36 in July 2021) and the value of SLP is at 0.0039 (down from an all-time high of 0.364).
