We usually don’t think too hard about toilets, that utilitarian appliance in our bathrooms that accepts all of our waste, mistakes, and regrets without complaint. Although you can certainly spend a lot of money on some seriously fancy toilets, for most of us, a toilet is a largely anonymous part of our home’s…
Source: LifeHacker – Signs That It’s Time to Replace Your Toilet
Enlarge / Winding up to catch a ninth (!) generation of Pokémon. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
The Pokémon franchise has been nudging closer and closer to a fully open world since Sword and Shield appeared on the Switch in 2019. Those games and their DLC packs introduced a few dedicated free-range areas where you could roam around mostly at your leisure, but towns and caves and other areas were still strictly linear.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus came even closer. Nearly all of its world map was a free-roaming open area, but the sections were still cordoned off from one another by way of a central hub town. More importantly, progression was still largely linear—the game still introduced you to each area in a set order based on the story quests you had accomplished.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, both coming to the Switch on November 18, finally make the transition to a fully open world. After accomplishing a handful of introductory quests, the vast majority of the world map opens up to you, and you can accomplish most of the game’s quests in whatever order you want.
Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Pokémon Scarlet and Violet deliver a fully open world beset by technical problems
This is super embarrassing and I probably shouldn’t admit it, but last night I had a dream about Indiana Jones 5. I dreamed I was watching the new trailer and when I woke up, I was so sure that I saw the future, I actually checked my phone to see if Disney and Lucasfilm had released it. They hadn’t but hours later, I…
Source: Gizmodo – The Road to Indiana Jones 5 Officially Begins
India will be adopting USB-C type as a common charging port for smart devices, with stakeholders reaching a consensus at a meeting of an inter-ministerial task force, consumer affairs secretary Rohit Kumar Singh said on Wednesday. From a report: The government held wide-ranging consultations to standardize charging ports for all compatible smart devices, but it is yet to reach a decision on chargers for low-cost feature phones. With universal chargers consumers will no longer need a different charger every time they purchase a new device. Besides, the move will also reduce massive amounts of e-waste. In 2021, India is estimated to have generated 5 million tonnes of e-waste , only behind China and the US, according to an ASSOCHAM-EY report, Electronic Waste Management in India.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – USB-C Will Be Mandatory For All Smart Devices Sold in India
Multiplayer shooters are inherently hostile environments, and battle royales, even more so. But with Warzone 2.0’s new proximity chat feature, and its ability to squad up with enemy teams in select battle royale game modes, the latest Call of Duty BR is shaking up the flow of the game, allowing for unlikely alliances,…
Source: Kotaku – Warzone 2.0 Lets You Join Up With Your Enemies, And It Rules
Home security cameras were once rare comforts for people with considerable means, but these days, many of us can have them. There’s a difference, though, between owning something useful and really utilizing something useful—and if you’re not pointing those cameras toward the right spots, you’re not getting the best…
Source: LifeHacker – Where to (and Where Not to) Install Home Security Cameras
Your Facebook page will say less about you in a few weeks. After an early sighting by consultant Matt Navarra, Meta has confirmed that it’s removing addresses, “interested in” (read: sexual orientation), political views and religion from Facebook profiles as of December 1st. The move is meant to make Facebook “easier to navigate and use,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. If you’ve filled out any of these fields, you’ll get a notification about the change.
Other details you provide, such as your contact information and relationship status, will persist. You can download a copy of your Facebook data before December 1st if you’re determined to preserve it, and you still have control over who can see the remaining profile content.
Facebook is removing religious views and ‘interested in’ info from profiles from 1 December 2022 pic.twitter.com/SKjSrtwUwm
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 16, 2022
The move won’t have much practical impact on usability beyond reducing scrolling in the “contact and basic info” section. It may reflect changing attitudes toward privacy, however. Facebook included these sections in the early days of social networking, when users more readily shared their more sensitive details (MySpace, anyone?). Now, however, privacy is a major concern — Meta itself has been more interested in privacy in recent years, focusing on private chats and greater security. People may be less inclined to share info on profiles in an era when online stalking and harassment are all too common.
Source: Engadget – Facebook will remove political and religious views from profiles on December 1st
This step by step tutorial explains how to upgrade to Fedora 37 from Fedora 36 and older versions. If you’re already using Fedora 36, you can now safely upgrade to Fedora 37 desktop or server edition for latest features, performance and stability improvements.
Source: LXer – How To Upgrade To Fedora 37 From Fedora 36 Workstation And Server
In the latest example of what seems like daily Big Tech job cuts, Roku announced plans today to lay off around 200 employees, nearly seven percent of its workforce. The streaming company wrote in an SEC filing that it plans to cut the jobs in the US due to “economic conditions.” The company estimates it will pay between $28 and $31 million for the reductions, primarily because of severance payments, notice pay (where applicable), employee benefits contributions and related costs.
Roku says most of the layoffs will happen in Q4, with the remaining cuts expected to be “substantially complete” by the end of Q1 2023. In a statement released today, Roku said, “Taking these actions now will allow us to focus our investments on key strategic priorities to drive future growth and enhance our leadership position.”
These layoffs follow a warning from Roku in its latest quarterly results that it anticipates a year-over-year revenue decline for Q4. The company’s shares dropped almost three percent today in trading before the bell.
Big Tech job cuts have become an unfortunate trend in recent months. Roku’s layoffs follow downsizing from Meta, which laid off 11,000 employees last week; Twitter, which cut approximately 3,800 jobs earlier this month; plus Amazon and Microsoft. Although Apple has so far remained an exception, it imposed a hiring freeze expected to continue into late 2023. Likewise, Disney is reportedly freezing hiring and anticipating cuts, while Netflix laid off around 300 people back in June. Streaming-focused companies — Roku included — have faced the dual challenges of an uncertain economy and a revenue decline following a boom during the coronavirus pandemic.
Source: Engadget – Roku will lay off 200 employees after warning of weak Q4 results
Cambridge Dictionary has revealed its word of the year. Ready for it? It’s “Homer,” stemming from frustrations from the widely popular game, Wordle. The company said the word was searched in their dictionary over 75,000 times this year, with more than 65,000 of the searches taking place on May 5, the day it was the…
Source: Gizmodo – D’oh! Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year Caused Wordle Players a Lot of Frustration
The US Food and Drug Administration has given a safety clearance to lab-grown meat for the first time. From a report: Upside Foods, a California-based company that makes meat from cultured chicken cells, will be able to begin selling its products once its facilities have been inspected by the US Department of Agriculture. The agency said it had evaluated the information submitted by Upside Foods and it had “no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion.”
“Advancements in cell culture technology are enabling food developers to use animal cells obtained from livestock, poultry, and seafood in the production of food, with these products expected to be ready for the U.S. market in the near future,” Dr. Robert M. Califf, the FDA’s commissioner of food and drugs and Susan T. Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), said in a statement.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Lab-Grown Meat is OK For Human Consumption, FDA Says
Oh, did you think the MCU had a monopoly on Marvel TV series? Sony Pictures, license holders of the Spider-Man (But Technically Spider-Man-Less) Cinematic Universe, has announced that the Webslinger’s extended cast of characters will extend itself to television as rumored back in 2020, beginning with Silk: Spider…
Source: Gizmodo – Sony’s Spider-Man Universe Webslings Its Way Onto TV
Safety while traveling is always a concern around big holidays, especially when it comes to driving. When planning a summer trip, you want to know about what kind of traffic you’ll encounter where you’re going. At Halloween, you think of sidewalk safety in your neighborhood. And ahead of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and…
Source: LifeHacker – These Are the Worst States for Drunk Driving
Streets of Rage is a name that will make many Gen X and Millennial gamers turn misty-eyed. A trilogy of belt-scroller titles that released for Sega’s 16-bit Genesis console (known as the “Mega Drive” internationally), they were regarded as some of the very best of the beat-’em-up genre. A fourth game came out in 2020 to modest acclaim, but
Source: Hot Hardware – Streets Of Rage Game Is Being Made Into A Movie, Why John Wick Fans Should Be Pumped
Today, Netflix released a new trailer for its upcoming animated Sonic show, Sonic Prime, that is jam-packed with fun new multiverse designs for its colorful cast of characters.
Source: Kotaku – Netflix’s Sonic The Hedgehog Show Has Some Real Spiderverse Vibes
Gamers of the late 1980s, and all the way into late 2012, will no doubt remember the awesomeness that was Nintendo Power. If you, like many of us here at HotHardware, remember flipping through the pages of Nintendo Power, you’ll probably be excited to learn that high-resolution digitals scans of every single issue are now available on-line.
A
Source: Hot Hardware – Every Nintendo Power Issue In Full Color Is Available To Download But For How Long?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Dead Island 2 will arrive later than expected. The zombie-smashing game re-emerged in August with a trailer, gameplay video and a firm release date of February 3rd. As it turns out, that release date was actually malleable. Publisher Deep Silver and developer Dambuster Studios have pushed Dead Island 2 back to April 28th.
“The irony of delaying Dead Island 2 is not lost on us and we are as disappointed as you undoubtedly are,” a note on the game’s Twitter account reads. “The delay is just 12 short weeks and development is on the final straight now. We’re going to take the time we need to make sure we can launch a game we’re proud to launch.”
The delay is just 12 short weeks and development is on the final straight now. The new release date for Dead Island 2 will be April 28th 2023.#DeadIsland#SeeYouInHELLApic.twitter.com/Vf1NARTECo
— Dead Island (@deadislandgame) November 17, 2022
Dead Island 2 was announced all the way back in 2014. The project has twice moved to a different studio, with Dambuster taking over in 2019, and it’s finally coming to fruition.
The sequel to 2011’s Dead Island will be available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and the Epic Games Store, and it will be the first game to use an Alexa-powered voice command feature. You’ll be able to find out some more details about the game during a showcase on December 6th. The livestream will be available on YouTube, Twitch and the Dead Island website.
Source: Engadget – ‘Dead Island 2’ is delayed until April 28th, because of course it is
For those wondering about the out-of-the-box performance of different modern Linux distributions when running the new Intel Raptor Lake processors, here are six different distributions running on the current flagship Core i9 13900K processor. Tested this round was CentOS Stream 9, Clear Linux, Debian Bookworm (Testing), EndeavourOS, Fedora Workstation 37, and Ubuntu 22.10.
Source: Phoronix – Testing Six Different Linux Distributions On The Intel Core i9 13900K “Raptor Lake”
The Waymo and Geely driverless car. [credit:
Waymo ]
Waymo is now running a robotaxi service in two states, but the vehicles for those services are retrofitted commercial cars. The company rolls around in either the “4th-gen” Waymo vehicles, built on the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, or the “5th-gen” driver, built on the Jaguar I-Pace. That’s all great for enabling Waymo’s service to get up and running, but these vehicles, which are full of controls and dials for human drivers, are driven by a robot that, in the long term, doesn’t actually need a steering wheel or pedals.
So, for the second time now, Waymo is doing a ground-up design of a driverless vehicle, without any of those useless, legacy human controls. The car was originally announced in December, but today Waymo is showing off a bit more detail about the vehicle. Real-life models are actually being built now, with Waymo showing off the car at an LA press event and a camouflaged, sensorless, human-driven test mule recently hitting a test track.
The car is being built with Geely Group’s Zeekr brand and designed as an all-electric “transportation-as-a-service (TaaS)-optimized” vehicle. The car has no steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors, and four automated sliding doors open up like it’s some kind of road-going subway train. Inside, the minivan seats five people, including two in the front, where the dashboard contains nothing but a centrally mounted touchscreen. There are also two seat-back touchscreens for the back seats, where you can play music, pick a destination, or see what the car is currently thinking.
Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Waymo shows off its next truly driverless prototype car
The numbers are in and Disruptor in Chief Elon Musk is definitely having an impact on Twitter, but probably not the type he’d hoped for.
Source: Gizmodo – Democrats’ Trust and Favorability in Twitter Plummets Following Musk Take Over
