A new two-factor authentication tool from Google isn’t end-to-end encrypted, which could expose users to significant security risks, a test by security researchers found.
Source: Gizmodo – Google’s New Two-Factor Authentication Isn’t End-to-End Encrypted, Tests Show
TikTok’s greatest innovation was its ability to capture our attention spans, and the addictive social media platform is trying to innovate yet again. TikTok has begun releasing an AI avatar generator for users on the app.
Source: Gizmodo – TikTok Adds AI Avatar Generation Feature
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced its decision to block Micorosft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard on Wednesday citing concerns it would hurt competition in the growing cloud gaming market where Microsoft dominates thanks to Game Pass. It’s a shocking turn of events for what…
Source: Kotaku – UK Blocks Microsoft Activision Deal Over Game Pass
Your phone and social media love to remind you what you were doing on this day a year ago, or five. It’s a good way to marvel at how things have changed, and how your kids have grown. It can also tell you useful things about your gardens of yesteryear: When the tulips opened, where your peonies popped, or when the…
Source: LifeHacker – Why Every Gardener Needs a Visual Diary
A team of astrophysicists say quasars, some of the most brilliant phenomena in the universe, are likely caused by collisions between galaxies.
Source: Gizmodo – Galactic Collisions Could Be the Source of Quasars
On Wednesday, UK regulators torpedoed Microsoft’s planned $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, saying the deal wouldn’t help anybody but the companies themselves.
Source: Gizmodo – UK Blocks .7 Billion Microsoft Activision Blizzard Deal
Enlarge / A Granular Poison Frog (Oophaga granulifera) sits on the edge of a leaf. (credit: Paul Osborne via Getty Images)
From the brightly colored poison frogs of South America to the prehistoric-looking newts of the Western US, the world is filled with beautiful, deadly amphibians. Just a few milligrams of the newt’s tetrodotoxin can be fatal, and some of those frogs make the most potent poisons found in nature.
In recent years, scientists have become increasingly interested in studying poisonous amphibians and are starting to unravel the mysteries they hold. How is it, for example, that the animals don’t poison themselves along with their would-be predators? And how exactly do the ones that ingest toxins in order to make themselves poisonous move those toxins from their stomachs to their skin?
Even the source of the poison is sometimes unclear. While some amphibians get their toxins from their diet, and many poisonous organisms get theirs from symbiotic bacteria living on their skin, still others may or may not make the toxins themselves — which has led scientists to rethink some classic hypotheses.
Read 31 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Mysteries of the poisonous amphibians
A comet-like asteroid has been flaunting a tail of material as it approaches the Sun. But unlike its cometary counterparts, a fresh look at asteroid Phaethon reveals, this tail is made of sodium rather than dust, as was previously thought.
Source: Gizmodo – Mysterious Near-Earth Asteroid Phaethon Just Got Even Weirder
While employer-provided devices aren’t always a perk, sometimes they offer features your tech at home doesn’t. The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is not a perq-filled smartphone. It is a barebones work phone that’s meant only for pushing paper. And although it has a helpful shortcut button on the side reminiscent of a…
Source: Gizmodo – The Lenovo ThinkPhone Is a Motorola Smartphone in Stuffy Business Attire
Making a follow-up to Breath of the Wild (BoTW) is an almost impossible task. Not only was the first Zelda game on the Nintendo Switch an instant classic, it’s also one of the best games in an incredibly storied franchise. To make things even more difficult, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom features the same basic graphics, map layout and general mechanics as its predecessor, which can sometimes make follow-ups feel more like an expansion pack instead of a true sequel. But after getting a chance to play a hands-on preview build of Tears of the Kingdom, I think Nintendo might have just pulled it off by making a game that expands upon the original and then blasting it into the sky (literally) with a new world of creation.
Now before we get into the preview itself, I should mention that this build didn’t touch on any of Tears of the Kingdom’s (ToTK) story. The demo strictly focused on showing off Link’s new abilities in a small area that had me battling through a Bokoblin camp before exploring some of the game’s new sky islands. Now this may sound a bit contrived, but it makes a ton of sense because where ToTK shines is when you start combining Link’s new skills – Ascend, Recall, Fuse and Ultrahand – with his returning arsenal of items and weapons.
I’m going to start with Ascend and Recall because they are the most straightforward of the four. Ascend is a simple movement ability that lets you move through rock and other materials. The caveat is that, like its name implies, you can only go up and to make the ability work, you need to have some sort of ceiling relatively close above your head. It’s a great way to get to the top of a mountain or tower when you’re exploring a cavern or room below, and from there you can use your glider to soar to other locations. I should also mention that while the general topography is largely the same, Nintendo has altered a lot of previous locations for TotK while adding a bunch of new content with those sky islands.
Meanwhile, Recall is a lot like the Stasis ability from BotW, but in reverse. By targeting an object, you can then rewind time and return it to where it came from. This allows you to use falling rocks as elevators (which is super convenient for getting to sky islands), though you can also use it offensively as well. For example, in that aforementioned camp the baddies tried rolling a boulder at me, only for it to backfire when I used Recall to send the rock straight back at them as if Link was bowling for Bokoblins. Trust me, it’s even more satisfying than it sounds, and it only gets better when you can combo Recall with other attacks like bombs and arrows, which brings us to Fuse.
In a lot of ways, Fuse makes me feel sorry for other developers because it’s an ability that’s wildly fun but seems like a nightmare to program due to all the possible combos. In short, it lets you combine pretty much any one item – from plants to stuff like bombs – with any one of your weapons to often surprising outcomes. In Nintendo’s gameplay demo, you can see series producer Eijii Aonuma demonstrating a few combos, but when you finally start messing around with things on your own, the results can be astounding. You can fuse various crystals to arrows to unleash powerful elemental attacks. Alternatively, I fused a frond to a stick to create a hilarious mid-range air attack that feels like you’re beating someone up with the fan from Smash Bros. And because you can fuse items lying on the ground with one of your weapons in the middle of a fight, it encourages you to be resourceful during battle.
There are also a lot of handy utility combos like fusing a light-emitting plant to an arrow to illuminate caves and such. Not only does this give spelunking a moody almost Dark Souls-like vibe at times, it’s also an expansion to gameplay as lighting has a direct effect on how you experience new areas. And if that wasn’t enough, combining items also increases the durability and strength of the base items, so you’re incentivized to try out a wide variety of fusions.
But the ability with the biggest impact is Ultrahand, which sounds silly especially when you consider that it comes from what looks like an ancient version of the iconic Power Glove. Ultrahand allows you to build machines using nearby materials and from what I’ve played the possibilities are endless. It reminds of the old Skyrim meme that goes “See that mountain? You can climb it,” except that in TotK’s case, it’s more like “Imagine a vehicle? You can build it.”
Contraptions can be as simple as a raft or as complicated as a plane, and by using special Zonai devices which can take the form of fans, rockets and more along with some sort of built-in batteries (the demo didn’t explain where or how to upgrade power sources), you can use these devices to traverse the world like Aladdin on a magic carpet ride. But it’s better because the carpet is of your design.
On some level, I have to imagine that Ultrahand was partly inspired by all the crazy contraptions created by players in BotW, and now Nintendo is doubling down on that creativity. Even without doing anything related to the story, I can already see myself getting totally lost in a world of my own creation. For example, in the demo area there was a conveniently placed pile of wooden boards and wheels. So naturally I took 10 minutes to arrange them into a crude war wagon. Then I attached a steering wheel, fans in back for propulsion and flamethrowers up front for extra damage, only to have the whole thing burn up as soon as I drove into some tall grass. It was such an anti-climatic (but hilarious) end to my newly constructed vehicle and I couldn’t wait to do it again. But next time with some metal parts.
The one downside to Ultrahand (if there is one) is that it definitely takes some time to get used to the controls. It’s almost like Nintendo dropped a streamlined version of Besiege into Tears of the Kingdom, which is great because you get a lot of freedom on how to put things together. However, moving and rotating each piece so that it attaches properly to your vehicle requires some patience. Thankfully, for those less interested in building their own vehicles, I can confirm that there is a streamlined way of making new contraptions with a couple simple button taps. (I can’t say much more right now.)
After my 75-minute demo session, all I could think about were the endless number combos and possibilities I wanted to try. It feels like Nintendo has really leaned into the sandbox nature of the previous Zelda game, and even without touching the story I can already tell how easy it will be to get sidetracked by Tears of the Kingdom’s creative opportunities. But my biggest takeaway is that coming from Breath of the Wild – which was a game so good it made me rethink how I score video games – Tears of the Kingdom is already giving off similar vibes of magic and wonder. In a lot ways, Tears of the Kingdom could be what Majora’s Mask is to The Ocarina of Time. You have the same engine, the same map, and the same basic mechanics, but with building and fusing instead of playful masks and that divisive three-day cycle. Some of Tears of the Kindgom’s new abilities might not be your cup of tea, but even so, it’s already feeling like a must-play.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom goes on sale on May 12th for the Nintendo Switch.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-hands-on-preview-a-sequel-with-endless-creative-potential-130047291.html?src=rssThe hardware monitoring “HWMON” subsystem updates have been pulled into the in-development Linux 6.4 kernel with ASUS Intel/AMD desktop motherboards being the big winners with these driver updates…
Source: Phoronix – 100+ More ASUS Motherboards Enabled For Sensor Monitoring With Linux 6.4
With this simple guide, learn how to install the Exaile media player on your Fedora 38, 37, or 36 Linux system today.
The post Simple Guide to Installing Exaile on Fedora Linux appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Simple Guide to Installing Exaile on Fedora Linux
There are a lot of factors that contribute to a good day on the slopes. Weather, terrain, and ability level are all important, but having the right equipment can mean the difference between having a comfortable, safe, and thrilling day, and tumbling down a mountain while freezing your ass off. Here then, are my picks…
Source: Gizmodo – The Best Ski and Snowboarding Gear You Can Buy in 2023
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: The latest Linux kernel is out with a slew of new features — and, for once, this release has been nice and easy. […] Speaking of Rust, everyone’s favorite memory-safe language, the new kernel comes with user-mode Linux support for Rust code. Miguel Ojeda, the Linux kernel developer, who’s led the efforts to bring Rust to Linux, said the additions mean we’re, “getting closer to a point where the first Rust modules can be upstreamed.”
Other features in the Linux 6.3 kernel include support and enablement for upcoming and yet-to-be-released Intel and AMD CPUs and graphics hardware. While these updates will primarily benefit future hardware, several changes in this release directly impact today’s users’ day-to-day experience. The kernel now supports AMD’s automatic Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) feature for Spectre mitigation, providing a less performance-intensive alternative to the retpoline speculative execution.
Linux 6.3 also includes new power management drivers for ARM and RISC-V architectures. RISC-V has gained support for accelerated string functions via the Zbb bit manipulation extension, while ARM received support for scalable matrix extension 2 instructions. For filesystems, Linux 6.3 brings AES-SHA2-based encryption support for NFS, optimizations for EXT4 direct I/O performance, low-latency decompression for EROFS, and a faster Brtfs file-system driver. Bottom line: many file operations will be a bit more secure and faster.
For gamers, the new kernel provides a native Steam Deck controller interface in HID. It also includes compatibility for the Logitech G923 Xbox edition racing wheel and improvements to the 8BitDo Pro 2 wired game controllers. Who says you can’t game on Linux? Single-board computers, such as BannaPi R3, BPI-M2 Pro, and Orange Pi R1 Plus, also benefit from updated drivers in this release. There’s also support for more Wi-Fi adapters and chipsets. These include: Realtek RTL8188EU Wi-Fi adapter support; Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 wireless chipset support; and Ethernet support for NVIDIA BlueField 3 DPU. For users dealing with complex networks that have both old-school and modern networks, the new kernel can also handle multi-path TCP handling mixed flows with IPv4 and IPv6. Linux 6.3 is available from kernel.org. You can learn how to compile the Linux kernel yourself here.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Linux Kernel 6.3 Released
Mandoline slicers have a scary reputation. And yes, they’re sharp as heck, and can do major damage if you don’t respect the blade. But inviting one into your kitchen is one of the easiest ways to cut down on prep time and improve your cooking.
Source: LifeHacker – A Mandoline Slicer Will Make You a Better Cook
Enlarge (credit: NZXT)
It’s a weird time to build a PC. That’s partly because fewer people are doing it—sales for parts and prebuilt PCs are down across the industry, as people continue to make do with the stuff they bought early in the pandemic. And GPU prices, while closer to “normal” than they have been over the last two years, are still historically high.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad time to build a PC. Storage and memory are mostly cheap, and you can buy a lot of CPU power for not a lot of money (especially if what you’re used to is an older quad-core processor you picked up five or six years ago). Intel and AMD have also released new CPUs since our last system guide update in July, and Intel has finally jumped into the GPU business after years of false starts and delays.
It’s as good a time as any for a new version of our PC building guide, so we’ve put together four different sample builds focused on different budgets and use cases. You can buy the specific components we recommend and get a good, functional PC, or you can use them as starting points and make changes based on what you want and need.
Read 45 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Ars Technica System Guide: Four PC builds for spring 2023
The Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) device driver updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.4 merge window…
Source: Phoronix – Intel Sierra Forest EDAC Lands In Linux 6.4, AMD’s EDAC Driver Aims For GPUs
Once, as I was drinking at a bar in a Boston, a stranger offered to buy me a beer in exchange for my soul. She showed me a small stack of bar napkins she’d collected with people’s names written on them; each represented someone who had pledged their soul to her in exchange for a cheap brew. Even though I was drunk…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Sell Your Soul to the Devil
Can you truly have an alt account if everyone in the world knows about it? The best answer may come from Twitter CEO Elon Musk, whose second alt account was revealed on Tuesday.
Source: Gizmodo – Elon Musk Has a Second Alt Twitter Account That He Stole From Another User
AMD has announced the Ryzen Z1 series of high-performance processors for handheld PC gaming consoles. The latest Ryzen Z1 chips wield Zen 4 cores and RDNA 3 graphics, a familiar combination that AMD uses for its current mobile Ryzen 7040HS series (Phoenix) processors. And while the chipmaker hasn’t officially announced any lower power Phoenix chips yet (e.g. Ryzen 7040U series), given the similarities in the feature set of the Ryzen Z1 family and the Phoenix silicon, the Ryzen Z1 series appears to be a custom-tailored Phoenix SKU that prioritizes energy efficiency for handheld gaming devices, with the lead customer being Asus and their upcoming ROG Alloy.
The Ryzen Z1 series is being introduced with two SKUs. The top-tier Ryzen Z1 Extreme has eight Zen 4 CPU cores – the maximum found on Phoenix – while the vanilla Ryzen Z1 cuts that down to six CPU cores. Meanwhile on the graphics side of matters, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme flaunts 12 RDNA 3 architecture compute units, again aligning with the max number found on Phoenix silicon. It’s vanilla Z1 counterpart, on the other hand, will ship with just 4 CUs enabled, one-third as many as on the flagship part.
Both chips benefit from a 16 MB L3 cache, while the Ryzen Z1 Extreme has 2 MB more L2 cache due to its additional CPU cores. In any event, the Ryzen 1 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme possess strong computing performance thanks to the high CPU core count and the usage of AMD’s latest Zen 4 cores. A hexa-core processor should suffice for handheld gaming, and either Ryzen Z1 processor will certainly outperform AMD’s older custom quad-core Zen 2 SoC (Aerith) that powers Valve’s Steam Deck.
| AMD Ryzen Z1 Specifications | ||||||||
| AnandTech | Cores Threads |
Base Freq |
Turbo Freq |
L2 Cache |
L3 Cache |
GPU | TDP | |
| Ryzen Z1 Extreme | 8/16 | ? | ? | 8 MB | 16 MB | 12 RDNA 3 CUs | 15 – 30 W | |
| Ryzen Z1 | 6/12 | ? | ? | 6 MB | 16 MB | 4 RDNA 3 CUs | 15 – 30 W | |
Hardware unit counts aisde, AMD isn’t revealing the clock speeds for the two 4nm processors. Curiously, an embargoed report published by The Verge has quoted “up to” 8.6 TFLOPS and 2.6 TFLOPS graphics performance respectively, based on AMD’s engineering projections. But these figures have been removed from the deck AMD has since been sending around to the rest of the press. If these figures do turn out to be reasonably close to what the final shipping silicon can hit, then that would mean we’d be looking at peak GPU clockspeeds of around 2.8GHz and 2.6GHz respectively, which is just a bit lower than what the Ryzen 7040HS chips run at.
The Ryzen Z1 series chips will support a maximum TDP of 30 Watts, which happens to be the same top power target as AMD’s mobile Ryzen U-series chips. Meanwhile, although this wasn’t in AMD’s press deck or press release, AMD’s Ryzen Z1 product page lists a minimum TDP of 15 Watts. Though it’s worth noting that unlike TDP maximums, TDP minimums are not a hard floor or ceiling for mobile processors. Chips can be configured to run even less when it’s called for, depending on what the customer desires.
Just to offer a comparison here, Aerith’s TDP is between 4 W and 15 W, meaning the Z1 series certainly offers a good deal larger power range for customers to play with. At its top TDP, such a configuration would quickly blow through the battery in any handheld device, but for docked devices it’s very feasible. As for handheld mode, it’s far more likely that we’ll see Z1 chips clocked relatively low to conserve precious power.
Being that this is an AMD product designed for PC-like devices, it has access to all AMD graphics technologies, including Radeon Chill, which helps improve battery life by adjusting frame rates based on the movements in the game. This also means that FSR will be on the table on a game-by-game basis, and RSR as a less optimal universal solution.
AMD provided some benchmarks for the Ryzen Z1 series utilizing the Asus ROG Ally. As usual, throw a pinch of salt over vendor-provided benchmarks. The device used here also had 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory and a Micron 500 MB SSD. It’s important to highlight that AMD put the Asus ROG Alloy in turbo mode for its benchmarks, which means that the Ryzen Z1 series processors were operating at power levels up to 30 Watts.
AMD’s results show the Ryzen Z1 Extreme delivers average frame rates above 60 FPS in most titles. However, the chipmaker tested with the lowest settings at a mix of 1080p and 720p upscaled with RSR to hit those figures. The Ryzen Z1’s performance wasn’t bad, but the two chips’ delta was perceptible. The difference spans between 6% and 73%. Zen 4-based processors took a significant performance hit at native 1080p resolution on the lowest settings. As expected, the Ryzen Z1 struggled in multiple titles and didn’t hit the 60 FPS mark.
Asus has first dibs on the Ryzen Z1 series; however, more competitors powered by the 4nm Ryzen Z1 chips should arrive down the road. Asus’ ROG Ally will be the first handheld gaming console to feature AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, with the company set to share more information on the handheld (including pricing) on May 11.
Source: AnandTech – AMD Releases Ryzen Z1 Series: Zen 4 & RDNA 3 Come To Handheld Game Consoles
