Twitter CEO Elon Musk forced blue checkmarks on dozens of celebrities and other high-profile users after they refused to pay for Twitter Blue subscriptions in the latest chapter of the blue checkmark apocalypse this weekend. However, blinded by his urge to troll and embarrass the celebrities who wouldn’t pay him $8,…
Source: Gizmodo – Elon Musk Gave Chadwick Boseman, Kobe Bryant, Anthony Bourdain, and Paul Walker Blue Checkmarks
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by computer scientist Stephen Thaler to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s refusal to issue patents for inventions his AI system created. From a report: The justices turned away Thaler’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that patents can be issued only to human inventors and that his AI system could not be considered the legal creator of two inventions that he has said it generated. Thaler founded Imagination Engines Inc, an advanced artificial neural network technology company based in Saint Charles, Missouri. According to Thaler, his DABUS system, short for Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience, created unique prototypes for a beverage holder and emergency light beacon entirely on its own.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a federal judge in Virginia rejected his patent applications for the inventions on the grounds that DABUS is not a person. The patent-focused U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld those decisions last year and said U.S. patent law unambiguously requires inventors to be human beings. Thaler told the Supreme Court that AI is being used to innovate in fields ranging from medicine to energy, and that rejecting AI-generated patents “curtails our patent system’s ability – and thwarts Congress’s intent – to optimally stimulate innovation and technological progress.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Supreme Court Rejects Computer Scientist’s Lawsuit Over AI-Generated Inventions
Amazon’s well-reviewed hybrid tablet, the Kindle Scribe, is receiving a software update that brings some new tools to the e-reader/doodle machine. The most notable feature here is the ability to send documents directly from Microsoft Word to the e-reader with just a few clicks. This allows you to read documents on the go and physically annotate them using the touchscreen and a Scribe pen. This is great for making edits on the fly, or just drawing pizza slices all over a college essay.
The feature is similar to the pre-existing Send to Kindle web interface tool, which lets you easily transfer files between external devices and the e-reader, but everything is done right in Microsoft Word. You’ll find this feature in the export tab, though an active Microsoft 365 subscription is required.
Physically annotating PDF documents is also getting a boost with this update, thanks to a new contrast slider. The slider increases the readability of the document itself or of any physical notes you add to the document via the stylus. This feature is available for any PDFs imported via Send to Kindle or for any pre-existing PDF documents available through the Kindle Store.
The Kindle Scribe is notable for having plenty of screen real estate, and this update gives you new ways to interact with that 10.2 inches. There’s a new multi-column layout for reading two pages at once (if you are into that kind of thing). This feature is only for landscape orientation.
Finally, there’s a newly-implemented bird’s eye view tool for notebook page management, letting you see nine notebook pages at once and make appropriate changes to single items or entire batches. You can now add or insert pages to pre-existing notebooks, move pages around and delete single pages.
Amazon has been pretty good about updating the Kindle Scribe to meet the needs of consumers. In recent months, the e-reader has gotten new digital brushes, integrated subfolders and more.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/kindle-scribe-update-lets-you-send-documents-directly-from-microsoft-word-160004681.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Kindle Scribe update lets you send documents directly from Microsoft Word
Cilium is an open-source project hosted by the CNCF that benefits from the contributions of multiple vendors. Learn more here.
The post Cilium: Open-Source Project for Cloud Native Networking, Security appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Cilium: Open-Source Project for Cloud Native Networking, Security
Batteries still suck, especially if you’re trying to keep costs low and not weigh a device down with unnecessary lithium. That’s a problem for Apple and its upcoming mixed-reality headset. In his latest newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman offered a few more hints of what could be coming down the pike with Apple’s…
Source: Gizmodo – Apple’s ,000 VR Headset Reportedly Packs an External Battery That Lasts Just Two Hours
In daylight, my garden is a beacon of color and texture, but when the sun sets, the yard becomes a black hole. Delivery drivers struggle to see the house numbers or find the footpath, and I hold my phone flashlight awkwardly to avoid tripping as I take out the trash. Sure, lighting would help, but I didn’t have in-…
Source: LifeHacker – Use Cheap LED and Solar Lights for Pro-Quality Landscape Lighting
The Supreme Court will soon hear two cases that could decide whether or not government figures can block their critics on social networks. The court has agreed to tackle appeals from California and Michigan residents who claim officials violated First Amendment free speech rights by blocking them on social media in response to critical commentary.
In California, Christopher and Kimberly Garnier believe Poway Unified School District members Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff and TJ Zane unfairly blocked them on Facebook and Twitter for writing hundreds of critical comments on talking points like school budgets and race. Michigan’s Kevin Lindke, meanwhile, says City Manager James Freed violated his rights by blocking him on Facebook over criticism regarding the pandemic.
The cases have had different outcomes so far. A federal judge sided with the Garniers in 2021, and an appeals court upheld the decision noting that O’Connor-Ratcliff and Zane both used their social accounts in an official role. However, the federal judge in the other case ruled for Freed in 2021, who won an appeal in 2022. Freed wasn’t acting as City Manager when he blocked Lindke, the judges found.
Cases like this took the spotlight in 2019, when then-President Trump and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez both faced accusations they violated free speech rights by banning critics. To date, courts have typically ruled based on whether or not officials are using their accounts for business. Even a personal account used for official activity amounts to a public space where criticism must be allowed, a federal appeals court found when hearing Trump’s case. These issues haven’t reached the Supreme Court until now. The legal body’s decisions could settle the question and force officials to allow critics so long as the posts don’t amount to harassment or threats.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/supreme-court-will-decide-if-government-officials-can-block-social-media-critics-155717504.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Supreme Court will decide if government officials can block social media critics
With the Linux 6.4 kernel there is the ability being introduced so that the machine keyring can optionally only store CA-enforced keys…
Source: Phoronix – Linux 6.4 Allows For Optional CA Enforcement Of The Machine Keyring
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
California is far and away the country’s largest adopter of plug-in electric vehicles. Because of the state’s ability to regulate its own air quality and spurred on by a large economy and plenty of affluent residents, the EV has gained plenty of traction in the Golden State. So much so that last month, California met its goal of having more than 1.5 million clean vehicles on the road two years ahead of schedule.
“No other state in the nation is doing as much as we are to accelerate our electric and zero emissions future,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom. “California is setting the bar for climate action—and we’re achieving our goals years ahead of schedule thanks to unprecedented investments secured in partnership with the legislature. We’re making real progress on the world’s most ambitious plan to end the tailpipe so our kids and grandkids are left with a cleaner, healthier planet.”
California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) began its Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program in 1990 with the intent of ameliorating the state’s severe smog problem. By the early years of this century, air quality had improved to the point where CARB could begin using the ZEV regulations to help drive down climate emissions.
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Source: Ars Technica – Californians have bought more than 1.5 million electric vehicles
Samsung might be stacking its battery life on future devices with EV technology. Samsung SDI has been working with two Chinese companies to develop new stacking equipment utilized in battery production, according to a recent report.
Samsung SDI is the department that currently develops and manufactures Li-Ion batteries for the company,
Source: Hot Hardware – Samsung Galaxy S24 Could Kick Battery Life Into Overdrive With EV Technology
Pokémon Go has been riddled with controversy over the past month after developer Niantic made changes to Remote Raid Passes. The changes included limiting how many times people could use these items to play the game remotely, rather than having to leave their home to take part. Alongside this, the studio made Remote…
Source: Kotaku – Pokémon Go Dev Says Everyone Loves Going Outside When Fans Are Mad About It
We’ve all been there: sitting in the back of a cab as it crawls through downtown traffic, the clock on the dash mocking you with its inexorable march towards a missed final boarding call and non-refundable ticket fees. Racing to make your flight is an experience nearly as old as commercial aviation itself — and one which has seen repeated solutions attempted throughout the years. Today, companies like Uber and Hyundai or United Airlines and Archer are working to get fleets of eVTOL aircraft to serve as short-hop air taxis, ferrying travelers from city centers to airports while avoiding the mess and hassle of ground-based traffic. In the ‘60s, companies like Chicago Helicopter Airways (CHA) just used a bunch of repurposed US Navy helicopters whose rotors almost never catastrophically failed. Almost.
Following WW2, the US government found itself with a massive surplus of military aircraft — we’re talking North of 150,000 individual planes, helicopters and sundry whirlybirds that all needed somewhere to go that wasn’t storage or a scrap yard. At the same time, an emergent middle class got the chicken in every pot and car in every driveway it was promised, along with all of the traffic and congestion that that particular American dream creates. So, in the early 1950s, the Federal government launched a series of grant programs to promote commuting via helicopter as an intra-city alternative to driving, simultaneously addressing both issues.
The CHA began its existence in post-war America 1948, as a regional mail delivery service operating in greater Chicagoland with a fleet of Sikorsky S-58C and H-34A Choctaw helicopters, but switched to carrying human passengers from 1956 to 1963. Its five-stop route moved between its home base in Winnetka, Illinois and O’Hare and Midway airports, the now defunct Meigs Field, and Gary, Indiana.
For $5 in 1962 money (or just under $50 today) travelers could get from Winnetka at the North end of the city to Terminal 3 at O’Hare, and do it in under ten minutes. Or for $11, sightseers could reserve space aboard a city-wide “Complete Triangle Flight” helicopter tour of Chicago. According to digitized pamphlets archived at TimetableImages, anyone flying to or from “Europe, South or Central America, Alaska or across the Pacific,” on Air France, BOAC Lufthansa, Mexicana, Northwest, PAA or TWA were entitled to a free helo-transfer between Midway and O’Hare.
At its peak in 1960, CHA operated 126 flights and carried 6,000 passengers daily. However, that success did not last long past the tragedy of Flight 698. On July 20th, 1960, 11 passengers and two crew members took off from O’Hare airport, headed for Midway under clear skies. Minutes into the journey, disaster struck when the main rotor failed and came apart. The crew attempted an emergency landing but were thwarted when the tail rotor subsequently broke off and the aircraft nose-dived into Forest Home Cemetery. It burst into flames, killing all 13 aboard.
Just three years later in 1963, CHA’s business had dropped off by half with just 3,000 people opting for helicopter rides to the airport. By 1966, the federal government’s grant programs had run their course and funding quickly dried up, effectively putting an end to CHA’s operations. The company attempted a comeback with limited service in 1969 but shuttered again for good in 1974.
The CHA wasn’t alone in its air commute aspirations. It was joined by similar services in Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC and the San Francisco Bay Area. European cities launched their own services as well including Paris, Brussels, Dooseldorf and between the UK’s Gatwick and Heathrow airports.
Clearly the issue was that the aircraft of the day only had a measly single rotor to provide lift and placed it at risk of major mechanical failure. That’s not an issue with modern VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft, such as the six-rotor Bell Nexus, which was to be used in Uber’s now defunct air taxi service, a similarly-specced offering from Volocopter, or the five-rotor version that Boeing tested in 2019.
However, finding reliable funding remains a challenge — even Larry Page’s pet VTOL project, Kitty Hawk, ceased operations in 2022 — which has resulted in much of the technology’s development concentrating amidst existing aerospace corporations. Airbus is working on a VTOL of its own, as is Honda, while United announced plans to buy 500 units outright from VTOL maker Eve Air Mobility to jumpstart its fleet. Joby Aviation, which purchased Uber’s air taxi business in 2020, just received significant investment from Delta as well.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/chicago-helicopter-airways-taxi-airports-transportation-153747571.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Travelers used to catch helicopter taxis between Chicago airports
Before you head out into the wilderness for a little camping, you probably check all the essentials off your pack list—but might not think about the logistics of carrying some of them around. Knives, in particular, can dull without proper storage and care, at best, and can be dangerous without it, at worst. There are…
Source: LifeHacker – A Pool Noodle Is the Best Way to Transport Knives on a Trip
Disney’s live-actionification of its classic animated feature films shows no signs of slowing down with the new The Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel, and Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, arriving in theaters on May 26. Ahead of its release, Lego revealed three new The Little Mermaid sets this past weekend,…
Source: io9 – Lego’s Got Three New The Little Mermaid Sets That Want to Be a Part of Your World
Enlarge / One user’s broken 7800X3D processor; the bulging spot on the bottom of the CPU also bent the pins in the motherboard socket. (credit: Speedrookie/Reddit)
Over the weekend, users on Reddit and YouTube began posting about problems with AMD’s newest Ryzen 7000X3D processors. In some cases, the systems simply stopped booting. But in at least one instance, a Ryzen 7800X3D became physically deformed, bulging out underneath and bending the pins on the motherboard’s processor socket.
In a separate post, motherboard maker MSI indicated that the damage “may have been caused by abnormal voltage issues.” Ryzen 7000X3D processors already impose limits on overclocking and power settings, but new BIOS updates from MSI specifically disallow any kind of “overvolting” features that could give the CPUs more power than they were built to handle. You can still undervolt your CPU to attempt to reduce temperatures and energy usage by giving the CPU a bit less power than it was designed for.
The Ryzen 7000X3D processors are set to a lower voltage than regular Ryzen 7000 CPUs by default because the extra L3 cache layered on top of the processor die can raise temperatures and make the CPU more difficult to cool. This has also made the chips much more power-efficient than the standard Ryzen chips, but that efficiency comes at the cost of overclocking settings and other features that some enthusiasts use to squeeze more performance out of their PCs.
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Source: Ars Technica – New BIOS updates attempt to keep Ryzen 7000X3D processors from frying themselves
The U.S. Supreme Court, exploring free speech rights in the social media era, on Monday agreed to consider whether the Constitution’s First Amendment bars government officials from blocking their critics on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The justices took up an appeal by two members of a public school board from the city of Poway in Southern California of a lower court’s ruling in favor of school parents who sued after being blocked from Facebook pages and a Twitter account maintained by the officials. The justices also took up an appeal by a Michigan man of a lower court’s ruling against him after he sued a city official in Port Huron who blocked him on Facebook following critical posts made by the plaintiff about the local government’s COVID-19 response. At issue is whether a public official’s social media activity can amount to governmental action bound by First Amendment limits on government regulation of speech.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Supreme Court To Decide if Public Officials Can Block Critics on Social Media
The trial against ex-OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain is set to begin later this week, nearly a year since he was arrested in New York City for wire fraud. Chastain’s arrest came on the tail-end of an FBI investigation into his non-fungible tokens (NFT) dealings, which alleged he had secretly bought NFTs and…
Source: Gizmodo – Ex-OpenSea Manager’s Trial Begins in First Alleged NFT Insider Trading Scheme
Anyone in the market for a higher end graphics card should talk a long, hard look at the Radeon RX 6950 XT. It released to retail just under a year ago at $1,099 after AMD briefly flirted with a $1,299 MSRP, and now 11 months later you can snag one for right around $599, which is the same price as NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4070.
Yes, the Radeon
Source: Hot Hardware – AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT 16GB Prices Slashed To 9 To Take On RTX 4070
Enlarge / A photo of the Moon taken by the ispace lander’s on-board camera from an altitude of about 100 km above the lunar surface. (credit: ispace)
It’s nearly time for a privately developed Japanese lunar lander to make a historic attempt to touch down on the Moon.
After spending five months in transit to reach the Moon—following a looping but fuel-efficient trajectory—the Hakuto-R mission will attempt to land on the Moon as early as Tuesday. If its mission operators decide to proceed, the landing attempt will begin as soon as 11:40 am ET on Tuesday (15:40 UTC). It will be livestreamed.
The landing attempt will start from an altitude of about 100 km above the lunar surface, where the spacecraft is presently in a circular orbit. It will begin with a braking maneuver by a firing of the spacecraft’s main engine, to be followed by a pre-programmed set of commands during which the lander will adjust its attitude with respect to the Moon’s surface and decelerate to make a soft landing. The process should take about an hour.
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Source: Ars Technica – A Japanese company is about to attempt a Moon landing
