Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg can’t duck and weave the jabbing questions that he’s responsible for buying out the entire arena for a major UFC show this Saturday. The rolling speculation has even started to claim that the Z-man himself wants to hop into the Octagon and test his mettle against a live opponent.
Source: Gizmodo – Something Weird Is Going On With Mark Zuckerberg and Saturday’s UFC Fight
The Sanderson Sisters are back! Hocus Pocus 2 is now streaming on Disney+, just in time for pumpkin spice season and repeat viewings in the lead-up to Halloween. io9 recently participated in the press conference for the film with the cast and creative team to discuss the making of the movie and why it t00k 29 years to…
Source: Gizmodo – 11 Magical Facts About Hocus Pocus 2 From the Cast and Creative Team
Enlarge / The USB-IF no longer recommends SuperSpeed logos or branding for speedy USB ports. (credit: Getty)
When SuperSpeed USB was announced in 2007, the branding was a logical differentiator. The term launched with USB 3.0, which brought max data transfer rates from USB 2.0’s measly 0.48Gbps all the way to 5Gbps. But by 2022, there were three versions of SuperSpeed USB in various connector types facing consumers, plus the potentially faster USB4. Looking ahead, USB products will continue to offer different performance capabilities while looking the same, but there’s at least one thing we can all agree on: The word “SuperSpeed” isn’t a helpful differentiator anymore.
SuperSpeed branding already felt pretty unremarkable by 2019, when the USB-IF, which makes USB standards, renamed USB 3.0 to USB 3.1 Gen 1; USB 3.1 to USB 3.1 Gen 2, and then USB 3.2 Gen 2; and USB 3.2 to USB 3.2 Gen 2×2. The group sought to make things easier for consumers by recommending to vendors that they label products not by specification name but by “SuperSpeed USB” followed by max speed (USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, for example, would be SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps).
Per updated guidelines and logos that started coming out this quarter and that you may see before 2022 ends, as reported by The Verge today, the USB-IF now recommends vendors label products as, simply, USB 20Gbps (for USB 3.2 Gen 2×2), USB 10Gbps (for USB 3.2 Gen 2), etc. No SuperSpeed necessary.
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Source: Ars Technica – USB-IF says goodbye to confusing SuperSpeed USB branding
The oil and gas industry may be seriously undercounting its greenhouse gas emissions. A technique used to burn off methane during production may be getting rid of less of the greenhouse gas than previously thought, a new study finds—which could mean that emissions from flaring could be as much as five times higher…
Source: Gizmodo – Fossil Fuel Industry May Be Seriously Undercounting Greenhouse Gas Emissions
![Coroner lists Instagram algorithm as contributing cause of UK teen’s death [Updated]](https://www.prime-wow.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GettyImages-537460890-800x534-1.jpg)
Enlarge (credit: ljubaphoto | E+)
In a London court this week, coroner Andrew Walker had the difficult task of assessing a question that child safety advocates have been asking for years: How responsible is social media for the content algorithms feed to minors? The case before Walker involved a 14-year-old named Molly Russell, who took her life in 2017 after she viewed thousands of posts on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest promoting self-harm. At one point during the inquest, Walker described the content that Russell liked or saved in the days ahead of her death as so disturbing, the coroner said in court, that he found it “almost impossible to watch.”
Today, Walker concluded that Russell’s death couldn’t be ruled a suicide, Bloomberg reports. Instead, he described her cause of death as “an act of self-harm whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content.”
Bloomberg reported that Walker came to this decision based on Russell’s “prolific” use of Instagram—liking, sharing, or saving 16,300 posts in six months before her death—and Pinterest—5,793 pins over the same amount of time—combined with how the platforms catered content to contribute to Russell’s depressive state.
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Source: Ars Technica – Coroner lists Instagram algorithm as contributing cause of UK teen’s death [Updated]
The Food and Drug Administration unveiled a new proposal this week that would change the criteria for which packaged foods the agency considers “healthy,” in an attempt to modernize its approach to nutrition and reduce the burden of diet-related diseases. From a report: Currently, about 5 percent of all packaged foods are labeled “healthy,” according to the agency. The definition, which was set in 1994, allows for food manufacturers to add the word “healthy” to their products, as long as the products have limited amounts of total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium and provide at least 10 percent of the daily value of one or more of the following nutrients: vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron, protein or dietary fiber. (Seafood, game meat and raw fruits and vegetables have slightly different criteria.) In 2016, the F.D.A. updated its guidelines to allow for some foods to contain more total fat and to include some that provide at least 10 percent of the daily value of vitamin D or potassium.
Crucially, there is currently no limit on added sugars under the current definition — an omission that the F.D.A. believes is inconsistent with today’s nutrition science. “The old rule was really outdated — you could create any kind of Frankenstein food that met the nutrient criteria and label it as healthy,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor of nutrition at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston. “This is a major advance.” The proposed rule, which the agency announced to coincide with Wednesday’s White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, introduces a new limit on added sugars — in general, no more than 2.5 grams per serving, although this can vary depending on the food. It also restricts the amount of sodium to no more than 230 milligrams per serving and provides limits for saturated fat, which can similarly vary depending on the food, the F.D.A. said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – What Is a ‘Healthy’ Food? The FDA. Wants To Change the Definition.
Magic Leap’s second take on augmented reality eyewear is available. The company has started selling Magic Leap 2 in 19 countries, including the US, UK and EU nations. The glasses are still aimed at developers and pros, but they include a number of design upgrades that make them considerably more practical — and point to where AR might be headed.
The design is 50 percent smaller and 20 percent lighter than the original. It should be more comfortable to wear over long periods, then. Magic Leap also promises better visibility for AR in bright light (think a well-lit office) thanks to “dynamic dimming” that makes virtual content appear more solid. Lens optics supposedly deliver higher quality imagery with easier-to-read text, and the company touts a wider field of view (70 degrees diagonal) than comparable wearables.
You can expect decent power that includes a quad-core AMD Zen 2-based processor in the “compute pack,” a 12.6MP camera (plus a host of cameras for depth, eye tracking and field-of-view) and 60FPS hand tracking for gestures. You’ll only get 3.5 hours of non-stop use, but the 256GB of storage (the most in any dedicated AR device, Magic Leap claims) provides room for more sophisticated apps.
As you might guess, this won’t be a casual purchase. The Magic Leap 2 Base model costs $3,299, while developers who want extra tools, enterprise features and early access for internal use will want to pay $4,099 for the Developer Pro edition. Corporate buyers will want to buy a $4,999 Enterprise model that includes regular, managed updates and two years of business features.
You won’t buy this for personal use as a result. This is more for healthcare, industry, retail and other spaces where the price could easily be offset by profits. However, it joins projects from Qualcomm, Google and others in showing where AR technology is going. Where early tech tended to be bulky and only ideal for a narrow set of circumstances, hardware like Magic Leap 2 appears to be considerably more usable in the real world.
Source: Engadget – Magic Leap’s smaller, lighter second-gen AR glasses are now available
Featuring the latest GNOME 43 desktop environment, Ubuntu 22.10 beta comes with PipeWire as the default sound system. Learn more here.
The post Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) Beta Released with GNOME 43 appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) Beta Released with GNOME 43
It’s been a little over a year since Elon Musk trotted a person in a spandex suit out on stage and called them a prototype robot. Now, he’s teasing that we’ll actually get to see one of his many, many promises escape the vapor at tonight’s Tesla AI Day. Or, at least, he says we’ll see enough of the robot for him to …
Source: Gizmodo – How to Watch Elon Musk Reveal His Robot at Tesla AI Day
Enlarge (credit: AMD)
Most development effort in graphics drivers these days, whether you’re talking about Nvidia, Intel, or AMD, is focused on new APIs like DirectX 12 or Vulkan, increasingly advanced upscaling technologies, and specific improvements for new game releases. But this year, AMD has also been focusing on an old problem area for its graphics drivers: OpenGL performance.
Over the summer, AMD released a rewritten OpenGL driver that it said would boost the performance of Minecraft by up to 79 percent (independent testing also found gains in other OpenGL games and benchmarks, though not always to the same degree). Now those same optimizations are coming to AMD’s officially validated GPU drivers for its Radeon Pro-series workstation cards, providing big boosts to professional apps like Solidworks and Autodesk Maya.
“The AMD Software: PRO Edition 22.Q3 driver has been tested and approved by Dell, HP, and Lenovo for stability and is available through their driver downloads,” the company wrote in its blog post. “AMD continues to work with software developers to certify the latest drivers.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Rewritten OpenGL drivers make AMD’s GPUs “up to 72%” faster in some pro apps
Enlarge / Former eBay executive James Baugh arrives at court for his sentencing in Boston on September 29, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Boston Globe )
Two former eBay executives were sentenced to prison yesterday for cyberstalking and harassing journalists whose news coverage had rankled the eBay CEO. One other former eBay employee was sentenced last year, and four others await sentencing.
James Baugh, 47, eBay’s former senior director of safety and security, was sentenced to 57 months in prison and two years of supervised release, a Justice Department press release said yesterday. David Harville, 50, eBay’s former director of global resiliency, was sentenced to two years in prison and two years of supervised release. Baugh and Harville were also ordered to pay fines of $40,000 and $20,000, respectively.
Charges against those two and several other ex-eBay employees were announced in June 2020. The victims were Ina and David Steiner, who operate the website EcommerceBytes and live in Natick, Massachusetts.
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Source: Ars Technica – Ex-eBay security execs imprisoned for stalking journalists who cover eBay
Apple’s South Korea offices were raided by antitrust regulators on Friday over a case of shoddy math, according to multiple reports.
Source: Gizmodo – Apple’s Korean Headquarters Raided by Antitrust Investigators
The one true mark of success in Hollywood is money, and to that end Jurassic World Dominion was a massive success. However, while the general consensus as to its quality was, let’s say, much less successful, apparently some of the choices made leading to that were made in service of the future of the franchise.
Source: Gizmodo – Jurassic World Dominion Was Bad So It Could Open the Door for More Jurassic Films
It’s easy to check how long it takes to watch a movie or a TV show, so why shouldn’t it be the same for video games? No one wants to spend $70 on a game that’s too short, or accidentally start a 200-hour JRPG when time is limited and precious. The next time you’re considering whether you should pick up a game or not,…
Source: LifeHacker – Use This Site to See How Long It’ll Take to Finish a Video Game
While some Linux enthusiasts eagerly recommend users boot their systems with the “mitigations=off” kernel parameter for run-time disabling of various relevant CPU security mitigations for Spectre, Meltdown, L1TF, TAA, Retbleed, and friends, with the new AMD Ryzen 7000 “Zen 4” processors while still needing some software mitigations, it’s surprisingly faster for the most part leaving the relevant mitigations enabled…
Source: Phoronix – With AMD Zen 4, It’s Surprisingly Not Worthwhile Disabling CPU Security Mitigations
YouTube TV is now offering users the option to subscribe to standalone add-on channels without signing up for the platform’s base plan. You can choose from 20 channels, including HBO Max, Showtime and NBA League Pass. Epix and Starz, which will soon be rebranded in certain territories, are among the options as well. YouTube TV is following the likes of Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Roku and Sling TV in adding standalone channel subscriptions.
The cable-style YouTube TV base plan costs $65 and includes more than 85 channels (the full line up will vary slightly, depending on your location). But you’ll no longer need that to access MLB.TV, Cinemax et al through the service. Users who opt out of the base plan can still take advantage of YouTube TV features such as unlimited DVR space, up to six profiles per household and three simultaneous streams.
To some, it might seem unnecessary to sign up for standalone channels through services like YouTube TV when they have their own apps. There are some benefits though, especially if you subscribe to more than one. You’ll be able to access the services from a single app that might be available on more platforms than standalone apps for Shudder, Acorn and so on. Managing your subscriptions with a single bill may be useful too.
Source: Engadget – You can now buy some YouTube TV add-ons without the base plan
Hurricane Ian has moved on from lashing Florida and is soon to reach South Carolina.
Source: Gizmodo – Hurricane Ian Moves To The Carolinas After Leaving A Path of Destruction in Florida
Elon Musk is widely expected to show off a new humanoid robot Friday at a Tesla artificial intelligence event. From a report: Mr. Musk first laid out the vision for the robot, called Optimus, little more than a year ago at Tesla’s first-ever AI day. At the time, a dancer in a costume appeared onstage. This time, Mr. Musk has said he wants a prototype to be at the gathering that is scheduled to unfold from 5 p.m. local time in Palo Alto, Calif. Mr. Musk has painted a vision of Optimus as helping Tesla make cars more efficiently. He has also suggested the robot could serve broader functions and potentially alleviate labor shortages. “My guess is Optimus will be more valuable than the car long term,” Mr. Musk said Aug. 4 at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting. “It will, I think, turn the whole notion of what’s an economy on its head, at the point at which you have no shortage of labor,” he added. When he first unveiled the Optimus concept, Mr. Musk said such a robot could have such an impact on the labor market it could make it necessary to provide a universal basic income, or a stipend to people without strings attached.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Musk Widely Expected To Unveil Humanoid Robot Optimus at Tesla’s AI Day Later Today
In the latest example of not letting your memes be dreams, McDonald’s announced that adults can get back in touch with their inner child by opening up a Happy Meal and discovering a toy of their own. Yes, Happy Meal Toys for adults are gonna be a thing, at least for a limited time.
Source: Kotaku – McDonald’s First Happy Meal Toys For Adults Are Really Ugly
