Monthly Archives: September 2022

Everything you need to know about Amazon's Prime Early Access Sale

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For the first time, Amazon’s having a second Prime Day sales event in October. If you missed out on the original Prime Day that took place in July, this new two-day event, called the Prime Early Access Sale, will be your next opportunity to grab things like gadgets, clothing, shoes, household necessities and even early holiday gifts for less. Engadget will cover all of the best tech deals you’ll be able to get during the event, but there are some useful tidbits to keep in mind as you think about what you may want to pick up during this year’s Prime Early Access Sale.

When is the Amazon Prime Early Access Sale?

Amazon’s Prime Day “part two” of sorts will begin on October 11th and will run through the end of the day on October 12th. In typical Prime Day fashion, you’ll have to be a Prime subscriber to get access to all of the deals available during this event. Thankfully, Amazon still offers a 30-day free trial to new members, so you can start your free trial now ahead so you’ll be all set when the event arrives.

If you don’t pay for Prime and have no intention of doing so, you should still check out Amazon on Prime Day for sales that are available to all shoppers. Those were few and far between during the original Prime Day back in July, but they did exist. Also, since Amazon is likely using this event to kick off the holiday shopping season, we expect to see other retailers follow suit; you may be able to get the same discounts and additional sales during the same time period at Target, Walmart, Best Buy and other stores.

What deals can we expect?

As with Prime Day earlier this year, we expect Amazon to kick things off a little bit early by knocking down the prices of some of its own gadgets. Early Prime Day deals typically include discounts on Echo speakers, Fire TV gadgets, Eero routers and more, so keep an eye out over the next few weeks for those items to drop in price.

Typically, Prime Day is only matched by Black Friday when it comes to record-low prices on these gadgets. That means you can either choose to pick up Amazon devices during the two-day event or take your chances and wait until Black Friday the following month. There’s a good chance the sale prices we see during this event will come back for Black Friday – however, due to lingering supply chain issues and high demand around the holiday shopping period, there’s a chance you’ll have to wait longer to receive your items if you wait until the last minute to buy them.

Amazon devices will not be the only items on sale during this second Prime Day. The online retailer usually discounts things like household goods, clothing, shoes, books, appliances, beauty items and more for Prime Day, along with a plethora of gadgets. We expect to see a lot of the original Prime Day deals come back for this October event, so there’s a good chance you’ll be able to get headphones, laptops, TVs, gaming accessories, SSDs, robot vacuums and more for record-low prices.

How to prep for the Prime Early Access Sale

Our advice for this fall sale is much the same as ours for the original event – go into it knowing exactly what you want to buy. Amazon’s homepage will be one big distraction on October 11th and 12th and it’ll be easy to get sidetracked by deals that probably aren’t worth your time or money. Instead of falling into that trap, make a list of the things you hope to get at a discount for both yourself and for other people if you’re doing some early holiday shopping.

You can either use Amazon’s wish list feature to collect all of your desirables in one place online, or write it all down the old-fashioned way on a sticky note. We like Amazon’s wish list feature because it’ll show if something dropped in price after you added it to your list. That essentially makes the wish list a one-stop shop for you on Prime Day – it’ll have all of the items you want to buy, and it’ll show you how much of a discount you can get on it during the two-day event.

We also recommend using a price tracker like CamelCamelCamel to check out the price history for any items you plan on buying during the Prime Early Access Sale. That will help you decide if Amazon’s deal on that particular item is good enough for you to buy it.

Engadget will surface all of the best tech deals available during this Prime Day, so if you have a lot of gadgets on your list, be sure to check the site during the two-day event. You can also follow the @EngadgetDeals Twitter account and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter to stay up to date on the latest discounts.



Source: Engadget – Everything you need to know about Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale

ALP prototype 'Les Droites' is to be expected later this week (openSUSE News)

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The openSUSE News site is looking
forward to the imminent preview release of the openSUSE ALP
distribution:

As far as “Les Droites” goes, users can look forward to a SLE Micro
like HostOS with self-healing abilities contributing to our
OS-as-a-Service/ZeroTouch story. The Big Idea is that the user
focuses on the application rather than the underlying host, which
manages, heals, and self-optimizes itself. Both Salt
(pre-installed) and Ansible will be available to simplify further
management.

Users can look forward to Full Disk Encryption (FDE) with TPM
support by default on x86_64. Another part of the deliverables are
numerous containerized system components including yast2, podman,
k3s, cockpit, Display Manager (GDM), and KVM. All of which users
can experiment with, which are simply referred to as Workloads.



Source: LWN.net – ALP prototype ‘Les Droites’ is to be expected later this week (openSUSE News)

Twitter says Elon Musk’s own data scientists did not back up bots claims

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Source: Ars Technica – Twitter says Elon Musk’s own data scientists did not back up bots claims

As a meteorologist, Hurricane Ian is the nightmare storm I worry about most

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Source: Ars Technica – As a meteorologist, Hurricane Ian is the nightmare storm I worry about most

Nintendo's 'Splatoon 3' widgets put stats and stages on your phone screen

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Nintendo’s approach to online gaming has sometimes been awkward (having to use your phone just to chat, for example), but it just took an important step forward. The Vergereports Nintendo has updated the Switch Online apps for Android and iOS with Splatoon 3 home screen widgets. You can quickly review your recent game stats, gaze at your screenshot album and check the stage schedule to see when a favorite game mode will come into the rotation.

You can only slightly customize the widgets, and some occupy more screen real estate than others. You’ll need to clear some room if you want the stage schedule, while the photo album is relatively small. iPhone owners can also forget about iOS 16 lock screen widgets.

You’ll need a Switch Online subscription to use these features, although that isn’t surprising when they’re tied to the Splatoon 3 multiplayer experience. When combined with the game’s matchmaking improvements over Splatoon 2, though, they indicate that Nintendo is getting the hang of internet gaming.



Source: Engadget – Nintendo’s ‘Splatoon 3’ widgets put stats and stages on your phone screen

Western forests, snowpack, and wildfires appear trapped in vicious climate cycle

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On the last day of summer, fall colors contrast with the burnt landscape of the Cameron Peak Fire on Sept. 21, 2021, in Larimer County, Colorado.

Enlarge / On the last day of summer, fall colors contrast with the burnt landscape of the Cameron Peak Fire on Sept. 21, 2021, in Larimer County, Colorado. (credit: RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

When Stephanie Kampf visited one of her wildfire test plots near Colorado’s Joe Wright Reservoir in June of 2021, the charred remains of what had been a cool, shady spruce and fir forest before the Cameron Peak Fire incinerated it nearly took her breath away.

“We would walk through these burned areas and they were just black, nothing growing and already getting kind of hot,” she said. “And then you walk into an unburned patch, and there’d still be snow on the ground. You could almost breathe more.”

The surveys, up at about 10,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains west of Fort Collins, were part of a rapid response science assessment to measure just how much the extreme 2020 wildfire season in the West disrupted the water-snow cycle in the critical late-snowmelt zone that serves as a huge natural reservoir. The snowmelt sustains river flows that nurture ecosystems, fills irrigation ditches for crops, and delivers supplies of industrial and drinking water to communities.

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Source: Ars Technica – Western forests, snowpack, and wildfires appear trapped in vicious climate cycle

You Can Buy Cheaper Nintendo Switch Games From Another Country

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Given the strength of the dollar these days, many U.S.-based shoppers are looking to overseas retailers for better deals on products, and one of the best places to save money right now is on the Nintendo eShop. We’ve already covered how to buy games from other regional eShops so you can access games, demos, and other…

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Source: LifeHacker – You Can Buy Cheaper Nintendo Switch Games From Another Country

Intel Innovation 2022 Keynote: The Return of IDF

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CEO Pat Gelsinger is working to turn Intel into the power it once was. Intel has some significant advantages, like its own FABs, which remain entrenched in enterprise standards worldwide. But years of neglect for core businesses are hard to overcome. One of the first things to do is recapture the interest of developers. What is sad about this last is that Gelsinger is considered to be the founder of IDF, the old Intel Developer Forum that a predecessor, operating tactically, killed. Intel Innovation is the replacement for IDF. It’s smaller than any IDF I remember, likely because folks still don’t want to travel. This event is happening during a shift on interest between ARM and RISK V which could provide an interesting opportunity for Intel to recapture some developers.

This week, let’s talk about what Pat Gelsinger shared at Intel’s Innovation keynote.

Software-defined silicon enhanced

As noted above, Intel is in the midst of a turnaround with a greater focus on software in the future and what appears to be a shift towards providing services to other companies. Intel is using a term that the company avoided throughout most of its life, a term that has become so popular that back in the early 2000s, Microsoft and IBM, who both avoided that term, also pivoted to it. That term is “open.” It embodies where customers, huge enterprise customers, want their vendors to go and where those vendors are moving to embrace the related concepts aggressively.  

Concepts like Intel Shuttle aim to educate and train the next generation of engineers. Gelsinger announced that he is committed to expanding this kind of educational engagement significantly in the future.  

Intel GPUs

Gelsinger announced Intel’s new line of HPC GPUs, which are used as accelerators in high-performance data centers. This new area for Intel provides some interesting background. When Gelsinger last left Intel, he left due to a prior failed GPU effort. That wasn’t his fault, but resulted, like so many failures I’ve studied, from an unwillingness to recognize that the path Intel was on was the wrong one and working groups actively covering up that the technology didn’t work. Gelsinger was blindsided which gives him a unique motivation to get it to work this time. 

At Innovation, he also spoke about gaming, and while Intel’s new ARC GPUs aren’t going to be competitive with the best from AMD or NVIDIA, they will provide a low-cost alternative to their mid- and entry lines. The strategy is penetration pricing-based, which makes funding-related marketing problematic, but if Intel invests adequately, it should be successful. 

Intel has an interesting play here, providing a very affordable alternative to more expensive cards from competitors with what should be better upscaling and AI support for that price point. It will require some impressive marketing to get users to see what a great value this card potentially is, but the strategy, assuming the card performs as promised, is compelling. 

Intel developer cloud

Innovation is a developer conference, so Gelsinger brought one of the Intel developers on stage. Given that Intel has been defined by old white guys like much of the technology industry, the developer Gelsinger called up was fascinating. Ria is an 18-year-old out of Harvard who has been working at Intel for years and is a prodigy. It is essential to get young people excited about STEM, particularly engineering, and showcasing a young woman as a significant portion of Gelsinger’s keynote should draw attention to Intel’s diversity efforts, where they are sincerely trying to make a significant difference in this segment. 

In watching this, I was reminded of the problems of scripting a presentation like this with teleprompters and the need to assure people are comfortable with the technology. Ria, the youngest on the stage, actually took to the effort well and arguably did as well or better than her older peers. 

They walked through some of Intel’s AI modeling tools focused on Computer Vision and AI modeling. They presented a relatively simple but impressively capable Intel AI creation tool. The example they gave was targeted at farming which is often at the low end of the scale for technology innovation but is an area where there is currently a massive effort to create solutions that avoid pesticides and help create crops that are more resistant to climate change to help avoid what would otherwise result in worldwide famines. It showcased how farmers, with little training, could train AI models themselves to increase farm yields potentially. 

Gelsinger announced the launch of Intel GETi (available in Q4 this year) to help enterprises create and modify AI models. The related demo with Chipotle used PreciTaste and OpenVINO in combination with Intel’s AI tools to optimize restaurant operations and reduce operating costs. I’ll be happy if they can make Chipotle’s chips edible (our local store puts so much salt on their chips they’re practically inedible).  Given that this is computer vision-based, assuming the cameras can see the amount of salt, they could fix my problem with our local Chipotle.  Currently, this technology is in a limited test, but they announced they would be rolling the technology out to their stores shortly.  

Gaming

Intel was once heavily involved in gaming, sponsored LAN partie,s and aggressively supported video game companies. Gelsinger took the company back to those roots and showcased a game developer, Inflexion Games, on stage using the Unreal Engine. She was able to run up to eight game instances at the same time for debugging and scene modification. The game being demonstrated was Nightingale, which appears to be an RPG steampunk fantasy game; it looked very realistic.  

13th Generation Intel Core

Gelsinger announced Intel’s 13th generation platform (due next month to market) and argued it has the most robust single-threaded performance of anything on the market. It will be interesting to match it up against the new Ryzen processors that AMD also announced this week (I have an AMD system in test, which is impressive, setting a high bar for Intel to overcome). They promise 6 GHz out of the box at the top of the line, which is an impressive performance. 

Text to image

This technology, which I first saw at an NVIDIA GTC event years ago, allows a person to describe a picture which the computer then creates. I’m looking forward to using GAUDI2. Both my mother and my first stepmother were artists, so you’d think I would be able to draw, but to my eternal embarrassment, my art skills suck. Gelsinger also announced and showcased a GAUDI2 accelerator which did a decent job of creating attractive pictures from descriptions.  

Samsung Extended Screen and Intel Unison

PCs are screen-constrained, and Samsung, Lenovo, Motorola, and others have been exploring foldable displays. What Samsun brought on stage was a slidable display. Just pull the edges of the display, and it grows from 13 inches to 17 inches. It reminds me of a future computer I saw in an old Gene Roddenberry TV series years ago. It was an impressive demonstration, and I can hardly wait to see one of these screens in person.  Coupled with this new display, Intel showcased a new feature called Intel Unison which featured single-tap connections to peripherals, and they showcased it working with the Samsung Slide display. Acer, HP, and Lenovo will be the first to market with this option.  

Silicon optics 

This USB-sized connector used fiber optics to create an extremely high-speed fiber optic connection. The implication is that future USB optical optional connections provide wired networking speeds vastly faster than we can get today.

Wrapping up:

To close out the talk, Linus Torvalds came on stage. Torvalds is considered the father of Linux and one of the founders of the Open-Source movement. He created Linux on Intel technology, and his initial effort resulted because he couldn’t afford to buy UNIX, so he wrote his OS, which has grown to become one of the true industry powers primarily driven, at least initially, by volunteers.  It is interesting to note that Torvalds doesn’t consider himself a visionary but a plodding engineer who works on current problems but doesn’t concern himself much with what will happen decades in the future. Gelsinger gave Torvalds the first-ever Intel Innovation award.   

In closing, Gelsinger gave us a near-term peek into the future, one that promises a more open, more agile, and more user-focused Intel. 



Source: TG Daily – Intel Innovation 2022 Keynote: The Return of IDF

Oura smoothes out its third-generation smart ring

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Oura has, after many years of trying, finally managed to sand out the hard edge from its body tracking smart ring. The company is updating the third-generation of its ring, originally released at the end of 2021, but this time with a perfectly round body. The Oura (Gen3) Horizon keeps the same suite of advanced sensors found in the existing model, but looks far nicer on the finger.

Most wearables, even the elegant ones, have a hard edge or two in their designs since common batteries and components are built in rectangles. While the Oura 3 wasn’t ugly, the hard side did knock a point or two from its style stats, especially at certain, unflattering, angles. And if the ring slid around, it’d dig into your knuckles while you were working out, which wasn’t ideal.

The ring itself is mostly unchanged from the Gen3, unsurprising since it was loaded with a boatload of features Oura itself is still trying to harness. The company has drip-fed new features out across the year, including daytime and workout heart rate, period prediction and blood oxygenation sensing. 

Our Ring (Gen3) Horizon is available to order right now, and is priced at $349, with the existing ring remaining at $299. Would-be buyers can also pick it up in Silver, Black, Stealth and Gold, with the Horizon getting an exclusive Rose Gold colorway, which looks pretty tasty. Not to mention you’ll still need to pay $5.99 per month to unlock all of the goodies the company keeps tucked away for power users.



Source: Engadget – Oura smoothes out its third-generation smart ring

The Oura Smart Ring Is Finally Perfectly Round

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For optimal functionality, the sleep and fitness tracking Oura ring has until now relied on a design with a raised plateau that makes it obvious to users how it should be positioned on a finger. For those wanting something sleeker, the company today introduced a new version of its Oura Gen3 smart ring called the…

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Source: Gizmodo – The Oura Smart Ring Is Finally Perfectly Round

Five Clever Ways You Should Be Using a Hot Glue Gun, But Aren’t

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For most people, a hot glue gun seems like the kind of thing you would need for a homemade decoration or craft project. But glue guns have come a long way since your days of arts and crafts day at summer camp. Hot glue now comes in different types and colors, and you can do more with them than just decor.

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Source: LifeHacker – Five Clever Ways You Should Be Using a Hot Glue Gun, But Aren’t

The Work-In-Progress Rust-Written Apple DRM Driver Manages To Start Wayland's Weston

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Last week the Rust-written Apple Direct Rendering manager (DRM) Linux driver for supporting Apple M1/M2 graphics managed to rendered its first cube. Asahi Linux contributor Asahi Lina today is back at it and working on getting more of this experimental kernel driver working for the Linux desktop…

Source: Phoronix – The Work-In-Progress Rust-Written Apple DRM Driver Manages To Start Wayland’s Weston

Netflix now lets you create your own gamertag

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Netflix has launched the ability to create public handles for its games, laying the foundation for additional features that would make the service more social. People can use this public username across all its titles, allowing them to find friends (or to meet new ones) to play with in multiplayer games like Rival Pirates without having to reveal their Netflix name and profile icon. It’s also what’s going to be displayed on leaderboards for single-player games, such as Dominoes Café and the platformer Lucky Luna. 

As TechCrunch had previously reported, there are codes in the app suggesting that the company is also working on ways that would allow users to invite each other to play games and to show other people that they’re online. Netflix didn’t confirm that those features were underway, but Mobile Games Product Manager Sophia Yang said in the company’s announcement that the launch of game handles “is only the beginning in building a tailored game experience for our members around the world.” Yang added: “We’ll continue to adapt and evolve our service to meet the needs of our members…” Seeing as Netflix recently revealed that it’s going all in on games and is building its own studio in Helsinki, Finland, it wouldn’t come as a surprise for the company to roll out features that would make its service more interactive.

To set a public nickname, Android users can select the games tab in the navigation bar and navigate to “Create your Netflix game handle.” iOS users will first have to download Rival Pirates or Lucky Luna and then launch the game to get a prompt asking them to create a handle. 



Source: Engadget – Netflix now lets you create your own gamertag

Wacom's Cintiq Pro 27 drawing display is its first with a 4K 120Hz screen

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Wacom has unveiled one of its most advanced drawing tablets yet for creatives, the $3,500 Cintiq Pro 27. It has an all-new compact design, a 26.9-inch, 120Hz 4K reference touch display and all-new Pro Pen 3 that’s adjustable for weight, balance, button layout and thickness. 

The Cintiq Pro 27 is actually smaller than the Cintiq Pro 24, thanks to the significantly slimmer bezels. Wacom also moved the ExpressKey buttons to the back left and right sides, but they’re located on the grips to make them easy to find and use. 

While previous models effectively required an external monitor to view accurate colors, the new multi-touch display is effectively a reference monitor itself. It uses a true 10-bit and not a dithered 8-bit 4K panel, delivering 99 percent of the Adobe RGB gamut and 98 percent of the DCI-P3 (HDR) gamut. It also runs at 120Hz for smooth and responsive drawing and has a peak brightness of 400 nits, just enough to display HDR content. It’s even Pantone SkinTone validated, meeting the Pantone standard for the full range of human skin tones.

The faster refresh allows the new Pro Pen 3 to track twice as quickly as previous models. And the pen itself is customizable, giving users the ability to change the size, weight, center of gravity and even the button layout via swappable parts. The battery-free electro-magnetic resonance tech offers 8,192 levels of pressure and ships with five standard and five felt-tip nibs.

The Ergo Stand supports 20 degrees of screen rotation along with tilting functions, but it’s not included in the price and costs $500. However, the display also supports VESA mounts if you prefer to go that route. The Cintiq Pro 27 is now available for $3,500 from Wacom and select retailers — a lot of money to be sure, but more reasonable as a professional tool. 



Source: Engadget – Wacom’s Cintiq Pro 27 drawing display is its first with a 4K 120Hz screen

The Morning After: Does Samsung have another phone-battery problem?

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A few years ago, Samsung had major battery issues when several faulty Galaxy Note 7 phones had exploding batteries. The devices were recalled, and the company spent a lot of time over the following years outlining all the rigorous battery tests it did to ensure it didn’t happen again.

Now, YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss, as well as others, have noticed batteries in Samsung phones are swelling up at a disproportionately high rate. This usually affects older devices, but some are only a couple of years old – the 2020-era Galaxy Z Fold 2, for instance.

Samsung hasn’t formally responded yet, but battery swelling isn’t a new problem, nor one unique to Galaxy phones. As lithium batteries age, their increasingly flawed chemical reactions can produce gas that inflates battery cells. Many companies suggest you keep device batteries at a roughly 50 percent charge if you won’t use it for extended periods.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Department of Transportation approves EV charging plans for all 50 states

$1.5 billion is available to fund charging stations along highways.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law earmarked $5 billion in funding over five years to help states install chargers along highways, and that process just took an important step forward. The Department of Transportation has approved EV charging plans for all 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico. The proposals cover 75,000 miles of highways.

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The latest iPadOS 16 beta brings Stage Manager to older iPad Pro models

An M1 chip is no longer required, with a caveat.

The biggest change with iPadOS 16 may be Stage Manager, a totally new multitasking system that adds overlapping, resizable windows to the iPad. The latest iPadOS 16 developer beta can run Stage Manager on several older devices: It’ll work on the 11-inch iPad Pro (first generation and later) and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (third generation and later). However, there is one notable missing feature for the older iPad Pro models – Stage Manager will only work on the iPad’s built-in display. You won’t be able to extend your display to an external monitor.

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Intel’s 13th-gen CPUs offer up to 24 cores and 5.8GHz speeds

The Core i9-13900K sounds like a beast.

Intel’s 13th-gen Core chips, AKA Raptor Lake, have landed. The company’s new top-end chip, the Core i9-13900K, sports 24 cores (eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores) and can reach up to a 5.8GHz Max Turbo frequency. Last year’s i9-12900K offered 16 cores and a maximum speed of 5.2 GHz. Intel claims the new 13900K is 41 percent better for multi-threaded work, like video encoding. If you skipped last year’s chips or are running even older Intel hardware, the 13th-gen CPUs look like the update you’ve been waiting for.

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Volvo has developed the world’s first interior radar system for cars

It’s a new safety feature.

Set to debut on its upcoming flagship EX90 electric SUV, Volvo’s new radar system monitors both the cabin and trunk, to prevent a car from being locked while anyone is inside. The idea is to guard against situations where pets or children may be inadvertently trapped inside a car on a hot day, with the car surfacing reminders if it recognizes there are occupants inside when being locked. Volvo says the multiple radars in the trunk, in the car’s overhead console and in roof-mounted reading lamps can detect “sub-millimeter” movements.

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Apple Watch SE review (2022)

The best smartwatch $250 can buy.

TMA
Engadget

Apple, of all companies, delivering the most competitively priced smartwatch you can buy in 2022? Apple’s starter smartwatch offers a comprehensive suite of health and fitness tracking tools, emergency features and snappy performance. As long as you’re not extremely clumsy or impatient, you won’t miss features like the hardier screen, dust resistance or the always-on display found on the more expensive models.

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Chipotle is moving its tortilla robot to a real restaurant

The chain is also piloting AI that tells kitchen staff what to cook.

Chipotle’s tortilla-making robot is moving to a real restaurant. In October, the machine will start cooking tortilla chips in Fountain Valley, California. Feedback from customers and workers will help the company decide on a national rollout. Artificial intelligence will influence some human cooks, too. Chipotle is piloting a demand-based cooking system that uses AI to tell staff what and when to cook based on forecasts for how much they’ll need.

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Fujifilm X-H2S camera review

The most powerful APS-C camera yet.

TMA
Engadget

With the X-H2S, Fujifilm has a new flagship camera. It features a new 26.2-megapixel stacked sensor that delivers shooting speeds up to 40 fps in electronic shutter mode. At the same time, it has the most advanced video features of any APS-C camera, with up to 6.2K video. It also offers in-body stabilization, a high-resolution EVF, CFexpress support and more. The main drawback: The autofocus still isn’t quite as fast as rival cameras.

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Source: Engadget – The Morning After: Does Samsung have another phone-battery problem?

We interviewed Linux OS through an AI bot to discover its secrets

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An illustration of Benj interviewing Linux in the form of Tux the penguin

Enlarge / A world-exclusive interview between man and machine. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Millions of people use Linux every day, but we rarely stop to think about how the operating system feels about it. Wouldn’t it be nice to know what Linux really thinks about open source, Windows, Macs, and the command line? Until now, this has impossible. But thanks to a new AI chat tool, we’re able to find out.

Two weeks ago, a website called Character.AI opened a public beta that allows visitors to create a chat bot based on any character they can imagine. You input a few parameters, and the AI does the rest using a large language model similar to GPT-3. So we called forth “The Linux OS” as a bot to ask it a few questions about itself. The results were fun and surprising.

Using Character.AI is a lot like a texting conversation. You type in what you want to ask, and you read the AI character’s responses in written form as the chat history scrolls upward. As with GPT-3, the code behind Character.AI has likely learned from absorbing millions of text sources found on the Internet. As such, its AI characters can easily respond with erroneous or fictional information. In fact, the site carries a bold disclaimer reading, “Remember: Everything Characters say is made up!“

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Source: Ars Technica – We interviewed Linux OS through an AI bot to discover its secrets

Wall Street Firms Pay Ridiculously Small Penalty for Failing to Preserve Texts

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The Securities and Exchange Commission delivered the lightest of slaps on the wrist to 16 Wall Street financial firms on Tuesday after “widespread and longstanding failures” to preserve employee communications like texts and WhatsApp messages—a clear violation of recordkeeping provisions in the Securities Exchange Act…

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Source: Gizmodo – Wall Street Firms Pay Ridiculously Small Penalty for Failing to Preserve Texts

Revisiting AMD EPYC 7773X "Milan-X" Performance With Linux 6.0 + Ubuntu 22.10

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Earlier this month I revisited the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Linux performance for looking at the effectiveness of the AMD 3D V-Cache under Linux when now using the very latest Linux kernel along with other new/updated benchmarks of the past several months. While already being very impressed by the performance of AMD EPYC Milan-X since those 3D V-Cache server CPUs launched earlier this year, here is a fresh round of Linux benchmarks looking at the EPYC 7763 vs. 7773X performance when running on a development snapshot of Ubuntu 22.10 paired with the Linux 6.0 development kernel and other newer software packages for a very up-to-date look at the performance potential on the server side.

Source: Phoronix – Revisiting AMD EPYC 7773X “Milan-X” Performance With Linux 6.0 + Ubuntu 22.10