Call it fortuitous timing or simply a coincidence, but just days after I reluctantly parted ways with my Spider-Man themed PlayStation 4 Pro console (see my unboxing from 2018), Sony has lifted the wraps on its Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Limited Edition PS5 console bundle, which is an even better looking and obviously newer generation model.
As
Source: Hot Hardware – Limited Edition Spider-Man 2 PS5 Console Bundle Swings Into View And It Looks Amazing
Vulkan 1.3.258 was published today as the newest revision to this high performance graphics and compute API. There’s many fixes with the last Vulkan spec update having been in early July but making this release more notable are two new extensions…
Source: Phoronix – Vulkan 1.3.258 Released With New Host Image Copy Extension, NVIDIA DGC Compute
First up the belated Mesa 23.1.4 is now available as the latest stable point release in the Mesa 23.1 series…
Source: Phoronix – Mesa 23.1.4 Released With Intel Optimization Backported, New ANV Optimization Merged
NASA engineers and technicians are performing some of the final preparations for the Psyche spacecraft before its liftoff which is scheduled for October 5, 2023. Teams are working around the clock at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to make sure the spacecraft is ready for its journey to orbit a metal-rich asteroid, also named Psyche, estimated to
Source: Hot Hardware – NASA’s Psyche Mission To Explore ,000 Quadrillion Asteroid Enters The Home Stretch
Now might be the time to upgrade your living room streaming setup. Amazon has the Fire TV Stick 4K Max for just $30, or nearly half off. You can also get the regular 4K model for $27 (normally $50) if the Max is out of stock. And if you’re in the market for a full-fledged television, the company is running a sale on Fire TV sets that includes its own 2-Series and Omni models as well as offerings from Hisense, Insignia, Pioneer and Toshiba.
The Fire TV Stick 4K Max may be small, but it could cover all you need from a media player. It supports a wide range of services, including Prime Video, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Disney+, and can handle multiple HDR formats (including Dolby Vision and HDR10+) wth Dolby Atmos audio. It’s faster than Amazon’s other streaming dongles, and offers robust Alexa smart home support that includes live picture-in-picture for your video doorbell.
There are other good streaming devices to consider. You may want a Roku Streaming Stick 4K or Google Chromecast if you can find them on sale, particularly if you aren’t wedded to the Alexa ecosystem. And if you’re looking for a powerful do-it-all box that can handle gaming, you’re better off paying extra for an Apple TV 4K or NVIDIA Shield TV Pro. At $30, though, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max is difficult to top — you’re getting strong all-round functionality at the price of a budget device.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-fire-tv-stick-4k-max-is-nearly-half-off-right-now-133449251.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max is nearly half off right now
Getting scammed is never fun—but falling prey to a travel scam can be especially upsetting. Not only are you out a significant amount of money, but you’ve given away a lot of personal information, and your trip might be ruined. As WIRED explained, travel scammers are out there, so it’s worth knowing everything you can…
Source: LifeHacker – Avoid This Travel Agency Scam
As a gamer, you sort-of get inured to loading time. It’s largely unavoidable that games will, at some point, have periods where they have to say “please wait” and you can do little but twiddle your thumbs or maybe read some interesting load screen text while you wait for the engine to prepare the play environment.
It doesn’t have to be
Source: Hot Hardware – NVIDIA’s Load-Time Busting RTX IO Tested In Portal: Prelude RTX With DLSS 3
1987 saw the start of something huge, though no one knew it at the time. Capcom’s Street Fighter seemed like just another arcade game. Nice graphics, sure, but no one could have guessed that just four years later its sequel would spark a revolution that transformed arcades as we knew them. Suddenly everyone and their…
Source: Kotaku – Every Street Fighter Game, Ranked From Worst To Best
Rsync is the most common command for copying and synchronizing files and directories remotely as well as locally in Linux and Unix systems.
The post 16 Rsync Command Examples for Efficient File Synchronization appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – 16 Rsync Command Examples for Efficient File Synchronization
Its release is months away, but excitement is already building for Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels—which today revealed a new peek after that first trailer back in April.
Source: Gizmodo – In the Latest Trailer for The Marvels, Ms. Marvel Gets to Save the Universe With Her Heroes
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T’s legacy telephone network may have nearly 200,000 miles of lead-covered cables, according to an estimate by AT&T submitted in a court filing. “Based on its records, AT&T estimates that lead-clad cables represent less than 10 percent of its copper footprint of roughly two million sheath miles of cable, the overwhelming majority of which remains in active service,” AT&T wrote in a court filing yesterday in US District Court for the Eastern District of California. “More than two thirds of its lead-clad cabling is either buried or in conduit, followed by aerial cable, and with a very small portion running underwater. There are varying costs of installation, maintenance, and removal by cable type (aerial, buried, buried in conduit, underwater).”
Reacting to the court filing, financial analyst firm Raymond James & Associates wrote in a research note, “AT&T is telling us that the total exposure is 200,000 route miles or less.” With about two-thirds of the lead cables either buried or installed inside conduit, “We believe the implication for AT&T’s data is that the route miles that should be addressed most immediately is about 3.3 percent (or less),” the analyst firm wrote. AT&T’s new court filing came in a case filed against AT&T subsidiary Pacific Bell by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) in January 2021. The sportfishing group sued AT&T over cables that are allegedly “damaged and discharging lead into Lake Tahoe.”
The two underwater cables run along the bottom of the western side of Lake Tahoe for a total of eight miles. AT&T “contends that it stopped using the Cables in or around the 1980s or earlier, that the Easements therefore have terminated, and that Defendant no longer owns the Cables,” according to a November 2021 settlement. AT&T agreed in that settlement to remove the cables but now says it is at an “impasse” with the CSPA regarding removal. “In this matter, AT&T has always maintained that its lead-clad telecommunications cables pose no danger to those who work and play in the waters of Lake Tahoe, but in 2021, AT&T agreed to remove them simply to avoid the expense of litigation,” an AT&T lawyer at the firm Paul Hastings wrote yesterday in a letter to the plaintiff that was attached to the court filing. […]
AT&T’s stance that it won’t remove the Lake Tahoe cables any time soon is apparently a surprise to the plaintiff. The CSPA said in a court filing last week that in a Zoom meeting on July 10, “AT&T confirmed that it is prepared to commence the removal process on September 6, 2023, as long as the new permit request that AT&T submitted to State Parks in May is approved by State Park.” AT&T’s filing said the company never “confirmed” that it is prepared to start the cable removal process on September 6. The CSPA argues that the lead-covered cables “have leached, are leaching, and will continue to leach lead into the waters of Lake Tahoe, and that such leaching may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health or the environment.” Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an investigative report that found evidence of more than 2,000 lead-covered telephone cables installed across the U.S. Teleco stock prices plummeted as a result, since the remediation could cost the telecom industry $60 billion.
While members of Congress are putting pressure on telecom companies to act, AT&T does appear to be taking new actions as a result of the investigation. “AT&T is working with union partners to add a voluntary testing program for any employee who works with or has worked with lead-clad cables,” which “expands on AT&T’s previous practice of providing blood-lead testing for technicians involved in lead-clad cable removal,” the company said in its letter to the plaintiff yesterday. AT&T said it is also conducting new testing and site visits at certain locations.
AT&T’s stock slid to a 30-year low following the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – AT&T May Have Nearly 200,000 Miles of Lead-Covered Phone Cables Across US
Hulling strawberries is a task that gets exponentially more tedious with each pint. Even if you’re handy with a paring knife, removing stem from berry can get tiresome when processing pound after pound fruit. If you’ve got a mountain of berries to work through, consider hulling them with a reusable straw. (Literally…
Source: LifeHacker – You Should Hull Your Strawberries With a Reusable Straw
AI can now place us inside South Park episodes – should we be worried? This week, Devindra and Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham chat with Edward Saatchi, the CEO of The Simulation, about his company’s new AI technology that can generate TV episodes, movies and more. We preview a test South Park episode featuring Devindra, and discuss if this technology is actually a good thing for creatives. Also, Editor at Large James Trew joins to discuss his piece on AI-powered immortality. And to keep the sci-fi theme going, Devindra chats with the director and writer of Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone, Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
Interview with The Simulation CEO Edward Saatchi around AI-powered South Park – 0:59
James Trew on digital immortality and AI’s place in a new field, “grief tech” – 20:48
Microsoft / Activision Blizzard’s final merger deadline pushed to October – 32:19
Apple is working on its own generative AI chatbot – 33:19
Google tests AI tool to generate news articles – 38:15
ASUS takes over Intel’s NUC PC business – 44:20
Around Engadget: Sam Rutherford’s Nothing Phone 2 review – 51:21
Listener mail: Rohan from Singapore on what’s keeping the iPad from being a “real” computer – 56:11
Working on – 1:03:54
Pop culture picks – 1:07:43
Interview with the the creators of the new Netflix movie They Cloned Tyrone – 1:13:25
Credits
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Nathan Ingraham
Guests: Edward Saatchi, James Trew, Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-ai-south-park-they-cloned-tyrone-123026251.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Engadget Podcast: How AI created a ‘South Park’ episode around us
If you have plants in your home and live anyplace besides on the equator, you’ve likely looked into grow lamps to nurture your precious babies. You were probably also disappointed that grow lamps don’t really vibe with your aesthetic.
Well, I have good news: You can build your own, prettier grow lamps, and there is…
Source: LifeHacker – You Can DIY Better (and Prettier) Grow Lamps
Enlarge / Sorry, Dolphin fans. No Steam release for you. (credit: Dolphin Team)
A few months ago, the developers behind the Wii/GameCube emulator Dolphin said they were indefinitely postponing a planned Steam release, after Steam-maker Valve received a request from Nintendo to take down the emulator’s “coming soon” page. This week, after taking time to consult with a lawyer, the team says it has decided to abandon its Steam distribution plans altogether.
“Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it,” the team wrote in a blog post Thursday. “In the end, Valve is the one running the Steam store front, and they have the right to allow or disallow anything they want on said storefront for any reason.”
The Dolphin team also takes pains to note that this decision was not the result of an official DMCA notice sent by Nintendo. Instead, Valve reached out to Nintendo to ask about the planned Dolphin release, at which point a Nintendo lawyer cited the DMCA in asking Valve to take down the page.
Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Dolphin emulator abandons Steam release plans after Nintendo legal threat
Cerebras Systems and G42, a tech holding group, have unveiled their Condor Galaxy project, a network of nine interlinked supercomputers for AI model training with aggregated performance of 36 FP16 ExaFLOPs. The first supercomputer, named Condor Galaxy 1 (CG-1), boasts 4 ExaFLOPs of FP16 performance and 54 million cores. CG-2 and CG-3 will be located in the U.S. and will follow in 2024. The remaining systems will be located across the globe and the total cost of the project will be over $900 million.
The CG-1 supercomputer, situated in Santa Clara, California, combines 64 Cerebras CS-2 systems into a single user-friendly AI supercomputer, capable of providing 4 ExaFLOPs of dense, systolic FP16 compute for AI training. Based around Cerebras’s 2.6 trillion transistor second-generation wafer scale engine processors, the machine is designed specifically for Large Language Models and Generative AI. It supports up to 600 billion parameter models, with configurations that can be expanded to support up to 100 trillion parameter models. Its 54 million AI-optimized compute cores and massivefabric network bandwidth of 388 Tb/s allow for nearly linear performance scaling from 1 to 64 CS-2 systems, according to Cerebras.
The CG-1 supercomputer also offers inherent support for long sequence length training (up to 50,000 tokens) and does not require any complex distributed programming languages, which is common in case of GPU clusters.
“Delivering 4 exaFLOPs of AI compute at FP16, CG-1 dramatically reduces AI training timelines while eliminating the pain of distributed compute,” said Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems. “Many cloud companies have announced massive GPU clusters that cost billions of dollars to build, but that are extremely difficult to use. Distributing a single model over thousands of tiny GPUs takes months of time from dozens of people with rare expertise. CG-1 eliminates this challenge. Setting up a generative AI model takes minutes, not months and can be done by a single person. CG-1 is the first of three 4 ExaFLOP AI supercomputers to be deployed across the U.S. Over the next year, together with G42, we plan to expand this deployment and stand up a staggering 36 exaFLOPs of efficient, purpose-built AI compute.”
This supercomputer is provided as a cloud service by Cerebras and G42 and since it is located in the U.S., Cerebras and G42 assert that it will not be used by hostile states.
CG-1 is the first of three 4 FP16 ExaFLOP AI supercomputers (CG-1, CG-2, and CG-3) created by Cerebras and G42 in collaboration and located in the U.S. Once connected, these three AI supercomputers will form a 12 FP16 ExaFLOP, 162 million core distributed AI supercomputer, though it remains to be seen how efficient this network will be.
In 2024, G42 and Cerebras plan to launch six additional Condor Galaxy supercomputers across the world, which will increase the total compute power to 36 FP16 ExaFLOPs delivered by 576 CS-2 systems.
The Condor Galaxy project aims to democratize AI by offering sophisticated AI compute technology in the cloud.
Source: AnandTech – Cerebras to Enable ‘Condor Galaxy’ Network of AI Supercomputers: 36 ExaFLOPS for AI
Next to their social security card, your child’s birth certificate is their most important identifying document. They’ll need it if, for instance, they want to apply for government benefits, need a passport, or choose a military career someday.
Source: LifeHacker – Everything You Should Know About Your Baby’s Birth Certificate
The Qt Project released today Qt Creator 11 as the latest stable version of this open-source, free, and cross-platform IDE (Integrated Development Environment) software for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms.
Source: LXer – Qt Creator 11 Open-Source IDE Adds Integrated Terminal, GitHub Copilot Support
Enlarge (credit: Banj Edwards | Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)
“When checking the system this morning, I noticed your account logged in for over 20 hours,” begins a December 1998 email from the president of my dial-up Internet service provider (ISP) at the time. “Our service is unlimited, but we ask that you actually be using the connection while logged in.”
Today, when it seems like everyone is online 24/7 through smartphones and broadband, I’d be weird if I wasn’t online for 20 hours straight. But 1998 in Raleigh, North Carolina, was different. In an age of copper telephone lines and dial-up modems, Internet access wasn’t usually an always-on situation for a home user in the US. Each occupied telephone line meant another ISP customer couldn’t use it—and no one could call you, either.
But I’m getting ahead of myself—why do I have an email from 1998?
Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – The ‘90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president
As competition finally starts to figure out foldables, Samsung’s ready to prove it can still deliver them best. Its next Unpacked event is teasing a new generation of foldable phones, flanked by smartwatches and tablets. Here’s what we’re expecting.
While it hasn’t named the new hardware, the company is expected to reveal the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5. This year, though, the priorities are inverted. Where the book-style Fold is usually the main attraction, this year the Flip clamshell might get the most attention, with a substantially expanded front screen to go up against competition like Motorola’s Razr+. Both the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5 may adopt a “waterdrop” hinge, which narrows the gap while closed. Why should we care? It’ll be a slimmer foldable and have a smaller gap when the device is closed.
Wearable-wise, the company has not-so-subtly hinted the Galaxy Watch 6 will appear at Unpacked, and reports even hint at a Classic or Pro version to bring back the physical rotating bezel. (Some people are obsessed with smartwatches with a rotating bezel.)
Rounding out predictions, expect to see Samsung’s latest premium Android, the Galaxy Tab S9. We’re expecting to see base, plus and ultra versions of the laptop with upgraded screens and maybe even IP67 dust and water protection.
Samsung is streaming the event on its YouTube channel, starting at 7 AM ET on the 26th. Don’t worry if you’d rather sleep in — we’ll be liveblogging along and will hopefully get some hands-ons with the new devices. Stay tuned.
– Mat Smith
Amazon is bringing its palm-based payments to all Whole Foods Market stores
WhatsApp makes it easier to send messages to unsaved numbers
‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ finds empathy in memory
Apple’s MacBook Air M1 is back on sale for $750
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The best multi-device wireless chargers for 2023
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Once the world’s most wanted computer hacker, Kevin Mitnick, passed away at 59 on July 16th. The first time Mitnick infiltrated a computer system was way back in 1979, but he wasn’t convicted until 1988 when he was sentenced to 12 months in prison for copying a company’s software. He broke into Pacific Bell’s voicemail computers when he was under supervised release and continued to hack into cell networks, as well as company and government websites, as a fugitive in the ‘90s.
Mitnick was also involved in the theft of thousands of files and credit card numbers, but his obituary says he “never took one dime from any of his ‘victims.’ Mitnick eventually ended up spending five years in prison, which he described as a “vacation” by the time he was freed. From there, he changed the course of his career and became a White Hat hacker and cybersecurity consultant.
I hinted at this yesterday, but here are the finer details. YouTube Premium has jumped by a significant $2 from $12 to $14, while the annual price went from $120 to $140 per month, a savings of about $28 over paying month by month. Last year, Google hiked the family Premium plan to $23 per month and charged existing month-by-month subscribers the new fee.
According to The New York Times, Google is testing a new AI technology, codenamed Genesis, which can generate news articles. The tech giant has reportedly demonstrated the tool to The Times and executives at The Washington Post and News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal. Based on reports from people who witnessed the pitch, Genesis can whip up copy from the data fed to it, whether it’s current events or other types of information. Google believes journalists could use it as an assistant to automate tasks and free them up for other things. Some journalists fear it could well free them up from their jobs.
But the bots aren’t quite there yet: CNEThad to issue corrections after being made aware of substantial errors in most of the 77 machine-written articles it published under the CNET Money byline. And just earlier this month, Gizmodo’s io9published a Star Wars piece full of errors attributed to the Gizmodo Bot.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-what-to-expect-at-samsungs-unpacked-2023-event-next-week-111516314.html?src=rss
