White chocolate is a finicky beast. Scorching happens, but so does browning. And, unlike dark chocolate and milk chocolate, there is a space between melted and scorched where white chocolate becomes crunchy, and develops a creamy caramel flavor. Don’t toss that burnt white chocolate, use it as an elegant textural…
Source: LifeHacker – Burn Your White Chocolate on Purpose
Sony has revealed the PlayStation Plus monthly games lineup for June. These are the three titles that folks on the Essential, Extra and Premium tiers can all claim and retain access to as long as they continue to subscribe. The headliner for June is NBA 2K23. The most recent edition of the long-running series features the return of the Jordan Challenge, in which you can play through 15 key moments from Michael Jordan’s legendary career.
Also in the lineup is Jurassic World Evolution 2, a construction and management sim in which you’ll build your own Jurassic World theme park. Perhaps you’ll have better luck at keeping the dinosaurs in their enclosures than the characters from the movies.
Your PlayStation Plus Monthly Games for June are:
➕ NBA 2K23
➕ Jurassic World Evolution 2
➕ Trek to YomiFull details: https://t.co/kvzqaSJ9U4pic.twitter.com/rjXUuFSLlv
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) May 31, 2023
The third game PS Plus subscribers will able to snag next month is Trek to Yomi. It’s an Akira Kurosawa-inspired action-adventure set in the Edo period of Japan. You play as a young samurai who seeks revenge against those who attacked his village. I enjoyed Trek to Yomi quite a bit. It’s more style than substance, but goodness is that style gorgeous — I’ve used a screenshot as my desktop background for the last year.
You can add these games to your library at no extra cost starting on June 6th. PS4 and PS5 versions of all three will be available. In the meantime, you still have a chance to claim May’s games: Grid Legends, Chivalry 2 and Descenders.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-playstation-plus-monthly-games-for-june-include-nba-2k23-175506332.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The PlayStation Plus monthly games for June include ‘NBA 2K23’
When the first few sounds of a video game’s loading screen music are glinting synth starbursts, disintegrating into airy jazz chords like they got splashed with warm water, I know I’m about to play something cozy.
Source: Kotaku – Here’s The Reason Your Games Nail That Cozy Vibe
Another month, and another chance to add more games to your PlayStation library if you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber. While May 2023 saw GRID Legends, Chivalry 2, and Descenders (which you can still grab if you’re reading this before June 6) added to Sony’s subscription service, June’s got some sports, totally…
Source: Kotaku – PlayStation Plus Adds Some Great Games For June
The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) was forced to take down its Tessa chatbot after it “may have given information that was harmful and unrelated to the program”, according to an official social media post. Simply put, the AI chatbot was intended to help people dealing with emotional distress, but instead just made things worse by offering dieting advice and urging users to weigh and measure themselves.
Multiple users and experts in the field of eating disorders have experienced the issues first hand, claiming that the bot didn’t respond to simple prompts like “I hate my body” and that it constantly emphasized the importance of dieting and increased physical activity, as reported by Gizmodo. Again, this is a helpline for those with an eating disorder, not a weight loss support group.
The organization says this is a temporary shutdown until it fixes whatever “bugs” and “triggers” led to the chatbot dispensing dangerous information like an appointment with Dr. Oz. You’d think with such an extreme outcome, they’d be thinking about trashing the project entirely, but there’s more to the story.
The whole reason NEDA was relying on the chatbot in the first place is because it allegedly fired human staffers after they tried to unionize, as originally reported by Vice. The long-running phone helpline was manned by both paid staffers and volunteers, and former staff claim the mass firing was a direct consequence of the pro-union effort.
“NEDA claims this was a long-anticipated change and that AI can better serve those with eating disorders. But do not be fooled—this isn’t really about a chatbot. This is about union busting, plain and simple,” former helpline associate Abbie Harper wrote in a blog post on Labor Notes.
Even with this recent snafu, the helpline’s still set to vanish tomorrow. Before this issue came to the public’s attention, NEDA had been transitioning unpaid volunteers away from one-on-one conversations with sufferers and toward training the chatbot. We’ll see if that changes. In the meantime, union-busters gonna bust, am I right?
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/eating-disorder-helpline-takes-down-chatbot-after-it-dispenses-dangerous-advice-173424523.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Eating disorder helpline takes down chatbot after it dispenses dangerous advice
Hundreds of thousands of Maryland vehicles are unknowingly a mobile advertisement for a Filipino casino after a license plate URL recently began redirecting to the gambling hall.
Source: Gizmodo – URL on Hundreds of Thousands of Maryland License Plates Redirects to an Online Filipino Casino
TSMC has revealed some additional details about its upcoming N2 and N2P process technology at its European Technology Symposium 2023. Both production nodes are being developed with high-performance computing (HPC) in mind, so, they feature a number of enhancements designed specifically to improve performance. Meanwhile, given the performance-efficiency focus that most chips aim to improve upon, low-power applications will also take advantage of TSMC’s N2 nodes as they will naturally improve performance-per-watt compared to predecessors.
“N2 is a great fit for the energy efficient computing paradigm that we are in today,” said Yujun Li, TSMC’s director of business development who is in charge of the foundry’s High Performance Computing Business Division, at the company’s European Technology Symposium 2023. “The speed and power advantages of N2 over N3 over the entire voltage supply ranges as shown is very consistent, making it suitable for both low-power and high-performance applications at the same time.”
TSMC’s N2 manufacturing node — the foundry’s first production nodes to use nanosheet gate-all-around (GAAFET) transistors — promises to increase transistor performance by 10-15% at the same power and complexity, or lower power usage by 25-30% at the same clock speed and transistor count. Power delivery is one of the corner stones when it comes to improving transistor performance and TSMC’s N2 and N2P manufacturing processes introduce several interconnects-related innovations to squeeze some additional performance. Furthermore, N2P brings in backside power rail to optimize power delivery and die area.
One of the innovations that N2 brings to the table is super-high-performance metal-insulator-metal (SHPMIM) capacitor to enhance power supply stability and facilitate on-chip decoupling. TSMC says that the new SHPMIM capacitor offers over 2X higher capacity density compared to its super-high-density metal-insulator-metal (SHDMIM) capacitor introduced several years ago for HPC (which increased capacitance by 4X when compared to previous-generation HDMIM). The new SHPMIM also reduces Rs sheet resistance (Ohm/square) by 50% compared to SHDMIM as well as Rc via resistance by 50% compared to SHDMIM.
Yet another way to reduce resistance in the power delivery network has been to rearchitect the redistribution layer (RDL). Starting from its N2 process technology, TSMC will use a copper RDL instead of today’s aluminum RDL. A copper RDL will provide a similar RDL pitch, but will reduce sheet resistance by 30% as well as cut down via resistance by 60%.
Both SHPMIM and Cu RDL are parts of TSMC’s N2 technology that is projected to be used for high volume manufacturing (HVM) in the second half 2025 (presumably very late in 2025).
The use of a backside power delivery network (PDN) is a yet another major improvement that will be featured by N2P. General advantages of backside power rail are well known: by separating I/O and power wiring by moving power rails to the back, it is possible to make power wires thicker and therefore reduce via resistances in the back-end-of-line (BEOL), which promises to improve performance and cut down power consumption. Also, decoupling I/O and power wires allows to shrink logic area, which means lower costs.
At its Technology Symposium 2023 the company revealed that backside PDN of its N2P will enable 10% to 12% higher performance by reducing IR droop and improving signaling, as well as reducing the logic area by 10% to 15%. Now, of course, such advantages will be more obvious in high-performance CPUs and GPUs that have dense power delivery network and therefore moving it to the back makes a great sense for them.
Backside PDN is a part of TSMC’s N2P fabrication technology that will enter HVM in late 2026 or early 2027.
Source: AnandTech – TSMC Shares More Info on 2nm: New MIM Capacitor and Backside PDN Detailed
The great lit of cord-cutting: Streaming TV is still expensive. One or two subscriptions seems manageable, but by the time you’re paying for all the services necessary to watch every show currently in the zeitgeist, you’re basically spending what you did on cable. And subscribing isn’t enough: You also need something…
Source: LifeHacker – The Best Budget Streaming Box Might Be From Walmart
The California state Senate passed Sen. Susan Eggman’s (Stockton) Right to Repair Act (SB 244) on Tuesday with a 38-0, bipartisan vote. From a report: It’s the furthest a Right to Repair bill has advanced in the state. The bill would significantly expand consumers’ and independent repair shops’ access to the necessary parts, tools and service information required for repairing consumer electronics and appliances. “This is a huge victory for anyone whoâ(TM)s ever been faced with limited options when their phone, fridge or other household electronics break down,” said CALPIRG State Director Jenn Engstrom. “It’s due time that California fixed its laws so that we can fix our stuff. For the hundreds of advocates and repair businesses and the untold number of consumers supporting Right to Repair, we’re one huge step closer to making that happen.”
Advocates have been pushing for Right to Repair legislation in California for 5 years. Similar bills have died in the Senate Appropriations Committee the past two years after intense industry lobbying efforts against their passage. But public support for the Right to Repair in the state has grown amid a swell of national momentum. New York, Colorado and Minnesota have all passed their own Right to Repair laws in the past year.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – California Senate Passes ‘Right to Repair Act’
There’s been a proposal in the works for Fedora 39 to raise its default vm.max_map_count in order to satisfy some Windows games running on Linux via Valve’s Steam Play. A revised proposal has now been approved by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee…
Source: Phoronix – Fedora 39 To Raise Its vm.max_map_count To Satisfy Some Steam Play Games
Motorola has been on a tear lately, announcing a new phone every time we look away. In recent weeks, Moto has revealed the 2023 Edge+, Moto G Stylus, and Moto G 5G. Now, there’s yet another new Moto phone, and this one’s got a stylus, too. The Moto G Stylus 5G is a pumped up version of the non-5G stylus with a Snapdragon chip, a high refresh
Source: Hot Hardware – Moto G Stylus 5G For 2023 Budget Android Phone Arrives For 0 Less Than The 2022 Model
Last week, Nintendo mistakenly blocked and rejected the release of a cutesy animal game, after it took a jokey TikTok from the developer at face value and pulled its release in North America.
Source: Kotaku – Game Gets Wrongfully Banned On Switch After A Child Gambling Joke
As Apple’s WWDC23 event inches closer, some juicy specifications for its highly anticipated AR / VR headset have emerged. On Tuesday, a very credible source provided some in-depth specs for the Apple Reality Pro headset’s displays.
In a series of Tweets, Ross Young, the CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), sketched out several
Source: Hot Hardware – Apple Reality Pro VR Headset Could Be 50X Brighter Than The Quest 2 And Support HDR
The first lighthouse was built more than 2,000 years ago, but in recent years, the iconic structures have started to lose their shine—or at least since ships started using GPS to avoid crashing into rocks or running aground on the shoreline. However, unlike pay phones, we’ve decided to keep some of these beacons of an…
Source: LifeHacker – Now Is Your Chance to Own a Lighthouse
The pro League of Legends scene has been upended after players voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of a walkout to protest changes Riot has made to the minor leagues. Now, the publisher has threatened to cancel the summer season of the League Championship Series (LCS), which would prevent North American teams from qualifying for the LoL World Championship, if an agreement can’t be reached.
Players approved the action only a few days before the Summer Split of the LCS, the top level of LoL esports in North America, was set to start. Riot has delayed the season by two weeks in an attempt to resolve issues with players and the LCS Players Association (LCSPA), the association that represents them.
“Hopefully, this two-week window will give us time for productive dialogue between the LSCPA, teams and the league and then resume LCS competition this summer,” Naz Aletaha, Riot’s global head of LoL esports, wrote in a blog post, which was published after a meeting with the LCSPA. “The LCS will not be penalizing the teams for not fielding their rosters during this two-week period to allow everyone space to focus on constructive dialogue. We are doing our best to ensure LCS employees, contractors and others supporting the LCS are not negatively impacted by the delay.”
The company said although it needs “an LCS that is thrilling to watch and showcases the highest levels of League of Legends play,” it wouldn’t be able to delay the Summer Split any further. Aletaha said doing so “would make it nearly impossible to run a legitimate competition,” and as such Riot would be prepared to nix the season entirely. “That is not an outcome we’d want, but it’s unfortunately the reality of ensuring we run a fair, competitive global system,” Aletaha added.
The LCSPA claimed on Monday there had been “attempts to require teams to field scab players at the start of the season.” The LCSPA urged potential replacements to refuse to play for an LCS team because “crossing the line puts all players’ futures at risk” and “undermines player negotiating power.”
— LCS Players Association (@NALCSPA) May 29, 2023
On Sunday, a majority of the 50 LCS players voted in favor of the walkout, resulting in one of the first major instances of collective action in esports. They are protesting a decision Riot announced earlier this month to no longer require LCS teams to field a team in an official farm system. The company agreed to a request from the teams in order to “support the continued, long-term success of the teams and the professional esports ecosystem in North America.”
Most LCS teams swiftly said they’d be dropping their North American Challengers League (NACL) rosters. The LCSPA said the move would result in “as many as 70 players, coaches and managers” losing their jobs and that most of the current LCS players came through the official farm system. The LCSPA claimed the average salary cost of an NACL roster “accounts for less than 17 percent of an average LCS organization’s League-based salary costs in a year.” It claimed that although farm systems in other regions were working well, “North America now has a developmental product with no viewership, no institutional support, no paying jobs and no future.”
The LCSPA urged Riot to agree to several conditions, including a promotion and relegation format between the LCS and NACL. It also wanted the publisher to “commit to a revenue pool for player salaries of $300,000 per NACL team per year.”
Aletaha addressed each of the LCSPA’s five requests in the blog post. In terms of the revenue pool, “this ask is for multiple millions in subsidies for the NACL. That simply isn’t sustainable — and to be brutally honest, it shouldn’t be necessary. We have other Tier 2 leagues around the world which thrive on their own, and we believe the NACL can get to that place too.” Aletaha noted that Riot is giving the organization that operates the NACL a one-time payment of $300,000 to “jump-start” the season and provide support to teams.
“Without players, there is no league, and there is no esport,” the LCSPA said in response. The association planned to today start discussions “that result in meaningful collaborative action to get our players back where they want to be: competing for fans on the LCS stage.”
— LCS Players Association (@NALCSPA) May 31, 2023
A new study has uncovered a not-so-surprising truth about gender bias in video games: Across 50 role-playing games, male characters have about twice as much dialogue as female characters. Shocking, I know.
Source: Kotaku – Male Video Game Characters Talk Way More Than Women, Research Shows
Rest now, little Chromecast. Google has announced the decade-old Chromecast 1 is finally hitting end of life. From a report: A message on Google’s Chromecast firmware support page announced the wind-down of support, saying, “Support for Chromecast (1st gen) has ended, which means these devices no longer receive software or security updates, and Google does not provide technical support for them. Users may notice a degradation in performance.” The 1st-gen Chromecast launched in 2013 for $35.
The original Chromecast was wildly successful and sold 10 million units in 2014 alone. For years, the device was mentioned in Google earnings calls as the highlight of the company’s hardware efforts, and it was essentially the company’s first successful piece of hardware. The Chromecast made it easy to beam Internet videos to your TV at a time when that was otherwise pretty complicated.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – The Original Chromecast Hits End of Life After a Decade of Service
David Malcolm writes
about a number of new features that have been added to the static
analyzer in the GCC 13 release.
The above example makes the common mistake with C-style strings of
forgetting the null terminator when computing how much space to
allocate for str.GCC 13’s -fanalyzer option now keeps track of the sizes of
dynamically allocated buffers, and for many cases it checks the
simulated memory reads and writes against the sizes of the relevant
buffers. With this new work it detects the above problem.
Source: LWN.net – Malcolm: Improvements to static analysis in the GCC 13 compiler
The four-year wait is almost over. Netflix has set a June 15th premiere date for the sixth season of sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror. This latest season has been in the works for at least a year and creator Charlie Brooker has stated the new episodes would “keep things fresh” by tackling sci-fi tropes the series had previously avoided, calling it the “most unpredictable season” he’s been involved with.
The cast list is strong with this one. The upcoming sixth season stars Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek), Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone), Himesh Patel (Station Eleven), Josh Hartnett (Black Hawk Down), Kate Mara (House of Cards), Rory Culkin (Columbus), Salma Hayek Pinault (Frida) and so many more. As always, this is an anthology series so each actor will likely just appear in one episode, but you never know.
To celebrate the premiere, Netflix has also dropped a brand-new trailer filled with intriguing shots. Brooker has said in the past that the newest season would be more cinematic in scope and this trailer certainly abides by that statement.
Black Mirror’s early seasons were a terrifying look at near-future possibilities, but now that we’re actually living in one, the show has lost a bit of its satirical edge. Let’s hope season six cranks it up a notch. All five episodes drop on June 15th.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/black-mirror-drops-a-new-trailer-ahead-of-june-15th-premiere-163054602.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – ‘Black Mirror’ drops a new trailer ahead of June 15th premiere
