Hey, do want to own a retro video game store in California? And (this is important) are you not Elon Musk? Well, good news, someone is selling a game store, its entire stock, and even its 15-foot-tall Mario effigy on Craigslist right now, all for a cool $1,000,000. Why? Because the current owner just wants to retire…
Source: Kotaku – Craigslist Ad Begs Someone To Buy Video Game Store For Million
Enlarge / One of the medical clinics suspended by Mexican health authorities in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, on May 19, 2023. (credit: Getty | AFP)
Three more people in the US have died from fungal meningitis in an outbreak linked to tainted surgeries in Mexico, bringing the total deaths to seven, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.
The total case count remains unchanged from an update earlier this month, with 34 cases in the US: nine confirmed, 10 probable, and 15 suspected. Health officials are investigating 161 others who may have been exposed.
The outbreak is linked to cosmetic surgeries involving epidural anesthesia at two clinics in Matamoros, Mexico, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. Mexican and US officials suspect that a component of the anesthetic was contaminated, resulting in the pathogenic fungus Fusarium solani being injected directly into people’s spinal cords. The tainted surgeries are thought to have occurred between January 1, 2023, to May 13, 2023, around when the clinics were shut down by local health officials.
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Source: Ars Technica – Death toll rises to 7 in fungal meningitis outbreak; cases at 34, 161 at risk
Every major graphics product out right now uses either GDDR6, GDDR6X, or HBM3 memory, and the latter option only really exists for super-computing chips like NVIDIA’s Hopper H100, AMD’s Instinct MI250X, and Intel’s Data Center GPU Max. GDDR6 and GDDR6X are the standards of our day, and they’re really the same thing—GDDR6X just encodes the
Source: Hot Hardware – Micron Reveals Plan To Bring GDDR7 Memory To Market For Next-Gen GPUs
This weekend is a weird one: We’ve got Saturday, Sunday, then a normal workday for most of us, and then a holiday here in the States with July 4. And if you find yourself lacking any barbecue or other outdoor activity plans, that means it’s time for more games.
Source: Kotaku – Kotaku’s Weekend Guide: 7 Great Games To Play
Spotify might soon let you watch music, not just listen to it. Bloombergsources claim the streaming service is mulling the addition of full-length music videos to its app. The company is reportedly talking to potential partners, but it’s not clear who would support the feature or when it might arrive. Spotify has already declined to comment.
Video on Spotify is currently limited to podcasts, 30-second storytelling clips (to help artists talk about their work) and 10-second GIFs that loop while you listen to a given song. The media giant launched a TikTok-like home feed in March, but it’s meant more for discovering music and podcasts than video viewing. The company tried using TV content several years ago, such as clips from Comedy Central and ESPN, but it didn’t gain much traction.
The concept isn’t novel for streaming music services. Apple Music has had music videos for years. Spotify’s addition would help it match Apple, though, and might lure audiences who would otherwise watch the videos on YouTube. It would also add content to the new feed and help Spotify draw musically-inclined viewers from social networks like Instagram and TikTok.
Music videos don’t generate much direct revenue by themselves. YouTube gives creators a 55 percent share of ad revenue, which on average amounts to $18 per 1,000 views. Artists, labels and others involved then have to split that small amount. The clips supplement audio income, though, and potentially improve exposure for musicians.
There’s pressure to find new sources of income, too. Spotify laid off a significant portion of its staff earlier this year, including 200 in its podcast team, as it grappled with both a rough global economy and business missteps. Music videos could improve the company’s finances without requiring a large production team, as is the case with podcasts.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotify-reportedly-wants-to-add-full-length-music-videos-to-its-app-210427926.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Spotify reportedly wants to add full-length music videos to its app
While OpenZFS 3.0 has been talked about for a few years with macOS support, it doesn’t appear to be on the immediate horizon and the OpenZFS 2.2 release is being worked on currently for providing a few new features to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation on Linux and FreeBSD systems…
Source: Phoronix – OpenZFS 2.2-rc1 Brings Linux Container Support, BLAKE3 Checksums, Block Cloning
A new class action lawsuit accuses ChatGPT creator OpenAI of criminally scraping data from all over the internet, then using the stolen data to create its popular automated products. The lawsuit, filed this week by the Clarkson Law Firm in a Northern California court, is only the latest in a slew of legal challenges…
Source: Gizmodo – A New Class Action Lawsuit Adds to OpenAI’s Growing Legal Troubles
Nimona is now streaming on Netflix and if you’ve seen it, you know the long wait for its arrival was incredibly worth it. (If you haven’t yet watched, you’re in for a delight.) To celebrate the animated film—adapted from the graphic novel by ND Stevenson (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power)—Netflix shared a featurette…
Source: Gizmodo – New Nimona Featurette Explains How the Film’s Art and Themes Align
The slow pace of summer is giving us all time to notice subtle differences in screenings of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse, plan a ridiculous double-feature of Barbie and Oppenheimer, and roll some bottles down the stairs. It would be idyllic…if Grimace wasn’t still terrorizing everyone with his mysterious…
Source: LifeHacker – The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide to Kid Culture: Are Grimace Shakes Killing People?
If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s spreading misinformation for the memes. In the midst of news flooding (sorry) through the internet about the OceanGate Titan submersible implosion, Five Nights At Freddy’s ended up becoming a part of the story on TikTok. It’s all thanks to a viral audio clip from the games…
Source: Kotaku – People Mistakenly Think Five Nights At Freddy’s Meme Audio Is From Titan Sub
The FTC has proposed a new rule banning numerous forms of fake reviews online, from outright fabricated ones to those that are sketchily repurposed or secretly manipulated. It may not totally rehabilitate the notoriously unreliable online review ecosystem, but it could help make things a bit more bearable. From a report: This rule has been a long time in the making, which is par for the course at any federal regulator. The FTC’s first case of this type was in 2019, against a merchant that was making misleading claims and paying for fake reviews. Before that, it had taken on “influencer marketing” where a person didn’t disclose that they were being paid to promote a product. Now the agency is ready to take comprehensive action with rules they first previewed last October and have now put in near-final form. The proposed rule is the result of much research and of consultation with businesses, consumers, and even advertising trade organizations that predictably advised the FTC not to bother cracking down on this lucrative business.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – FTC Finally Proposes Ban on Fake Reviews
SUSE has issued an official statement in response to the growing concern in Open Source circles due to Red Hat’s actions. Here’s what they said.
Source: LXer – SUSE with a Statement in Light of Red Hat’s Recent Actions
Blizzard has released a string of excellent Overwatch animated shorts over the years. While the shorts are sublimely rendered and help to sketch out the backstories of the cast, Blizzard hasn’t neatly pulled together the sprawling narrative of this universe so far. The developers have pledged to do a better job of that in-game starting with Overwatch 2‘s sixth season, which gets under way in August. Before we get there, though, Blizzard is releasing an Overwatch anime.
The three-episode miniseries is called Genesis. The title and a trailer suggest that it will focus on the early days of the Overwatch task force, which was set up amid a global war against robots. The clip shows a glimpse of humans and robots living in harmony before an AI rebellion kicked off the Omnic Crisis. It features three heroes from the game — Reinhardt, Torbjörn and Ana — as well as Mina Liao, an AI researcher and fellow founding member of the Overwatch organization.
It was a technological golden age. Until it wasn’t.
Introducing GENESIS, an Overwatch mini-series.
Part one of three premieres July 6 ✨
▶️ https://t.co/70n9GGgIOxpic.twitter.com/lGeRIaoEfF
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) June 30, 2023
The teaser, which has a different animation style from previous shorts, suggests the miniseries will help to tie together some of the many disparate, transmedia strands of the Overwatch narrative before co-op story missions go live in Overwatch 2. The first episode will hit YouTube on July 6th and it’s just over five minutes long.
Overwatch fans have been begging for a show or even a movie based on the franchise for years. This miniseries might be as close as they get for now, but who knows? If it proves popular enough, Blizzard may be persuaded to invest in a bigger project that can put the Overwatch universe in front of a whole new audience. Meanwhile, Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller says each of the game’s story missions will have an opening and closing cinematic to help spell out more of the narrative.
The rich, memorable cast of characters played a major role in making the original Overwatch a cultural phenomenon when it debuted in 2016. If Blizzard is successful in shining the spotlight more brightly on them again, that might help fans forgive the studio for some of the misstepsit has made with Overwatch 2 recently.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/an-overwatch-anime-miniseries-will-debut-on-july-6th-203026390.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – An Overwatch anime miniseries will debut on July 6th
The European Space Agency (ESA) is gearing up for the launch of its highly anticipated mission to explore the cosmic dark side.
Source: Gizmodo – Watch Live: SpaceX to Launch Euclid—Europe’s Dark Universe Telescope
I’ve been writing about viral TikTok myths, but today we’ll dig into something a little different: a viral meal. On the surface, it’s a weird combination of flavors, but underneath is a reasonably healthy and possibly actually good-tasting meal. And then beyond that—well, that’s where it gets really weird.
Source: LifeHacker – TikTok Diet of the Week: the Mustard and Cottage Cheese Plate
Destiny 2 used to have very little downtime. Now, the sci-fi MMO goes offline at least once a week, sometimes more, as error codes and unplanned outages prevent players from logging on and completing their weekly quests, challenges, and loot drops. Now Bungie has finally provided some answers, and they’re about as…
Source: Kotaku – Bungie Explains Why Destiny 2 Keeps Breaking
With that exciting new trailer for Dune: Part II arriving this week, there’s no better moment to pile on more good Dune news. This time, it concerns the long-in-development Dune streaming series, Max’s Dune: The Sisterhood, which has added new cast members as it moves forward.
Source: Gizmodo – Max’s Dune: The Sisterhood Series Builds Its Cast Back Up
Sony blocked Roblox from PlayStation consoles because it was worried about inappropriate content reaching children. The revelation comes from a 2022 document, first reported byAxios, uncovered in the FTC’s Microsoft trial. However, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan said at the time that the company’s stance was softening, leaving the door open to an eventual PlayStation port for the viral user-generated platform.
Ryan explained the decision to withhold Roblox to investors early last year. “Historically, because of the large number of children that play on the PlayStation, we have been very careful with regards to opening them up to anything that could potentially exploit them,” he said at the time. But he struck an optimistic tone for investors eager to see Roblox on Sony consoles. “Over the last couple of years, however, we have reviewed those policies and relaxed a little on this. We have been conservative for too long, and now we are currently engaging with people at Roblox. We hope that the situation will change.”
Despite making the comments over a year ago, Roblox still isn’t on PlayStation consoles. The beloved title, which lets users create, share and play user-created content, is available for Xbox, iOS, Android, Windows and macOS. Nintendo hasn’t commented on Roblox’s lack of availability for Switch, but the console maker has also historically erred on the side of caution in keeping inappropriate content away from kids.
Roblox introduced a content rating system in 2021 to help parents better control the user-created games their children play. More than half of the platform’s daily users are under 13. Although it forbids content displaying sexual activity, illegal substances and swearing, occasional rule-breaking content can slip past moderation in user-created titles. In addition, Roblox is working to hang onto its users as they grow, now allowing content for players 17 and older. It says the 17 to 24 age range is its fastest-growing segment.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sony-didnt-want-roblox-on-playstation-due-to-child-safety-concerns-200631635.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Sony didn’t want ‘Roblox’ on PlayStation due to child safety concerns
The new Ubuntu kernel security updates address CVE-2023-35788, an out-of-bounds write vulnerability. Learn more here.
The post Canonical Releases New Ubuntu Kernel Security Updates appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Canonical Releases New Ubuntu Kernel Security Updates
Animations created by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio include images and videos showing what carbon emissions would look like if they were visible in our atmosphere. The videos of the swirling emissions were released this month—and it looks like a grosser, creepier version of the Northern Lights.
Source: Gizmodo – NASA Visualization Offers a Disturbing Glimpse of All That Carbon in Our Atmosphere
