Each time you accept the privacy policies and terms of service on any app or website, there’s a chance some of your data is being sold. Information brokers, also known as data brokers, are organizations whose entire business model involves collecting your personal data and selling it to advertisers. This may include…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Opt Out of Data Collection by Data Brokers
Enlarge (credit: Intel)
Intel’s new desktop processor generations haven’t always come with significant generational improvements in recent years, as the company has struggled with new manufacturing tech that enables big leaps in performance and power efficiency. For every major jump—the 12th-generation CPUs, codenamed Alder Lake, come to mind—you usually get several faster but less-than-thrilling iterations.
Intel is officially launching its 14th-generation desktop processors today, and they’re firmly in that iterative, non-thrilling group, even compared to last year’s 13th-generation chips. The good news for price-conscious PC builders is that they’ll continue to work in all current 600- and 700-series motherboards after a BIOS update, and Intel isn’t launching a series of new motherboards to accompany them—there aren’t many compelling reasons to upgrade from a 12th-gen setup to a 14th-gen one, but it’s an available option.
Even the branding Intel is using here signifies that the processors are a throwback—next-gen Meteor Lake chips for laptops and all of Intel’s other chips are losing the generational and i3/i5/i7/i9 branding in favor of “Core” and “Core Ultra.” By Intel’s admission, the last gasp of the 14th-generation branding here is a nod to how similar they are to the 13th-generation chips that preceded them (and, for that matter, the 12th-gen ones before that).
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Source: Ars Technica – Intel’s 14th-gen desktop CPUs are a tiny update even by modern standards
Last week Intel announced the Arc Graphics A580 as a new mid-range DG2/Alchemist graphics card option that comes in between the entry-level Arc Graphics A380 and the higher-end Arc Graphics A750/A770. With the Arc Graphics A580 coming in at under $200, it’s quite an interesting graphics card for those after open-source Linux driver support and/or those wanting to experiment with Intel’s growing oneAPI software ecosystem with excellent open-source GPU compute support.
Source: Phoronix – Intel Arc Graphics A580 On Linux: Open-Source Graphics For Under 0
Amazon has quietly rolled out support for passkeys as it becomes the latest tech giant to join the passwordless future. But you still might have to hold onto your Amazon password for a little while longer. From a report: The option to set up a passkey is now available on the e-commerce giant’s website, allowing users to log in using biometric authentication on their device, such as their fingerprint or face scan. Doing so makes it far more difficult for bad actors to remotely access users’ accounts, given that the attacker also needs physical access to the user’s device.
But Amazon’s implementation of passkeys isn’t without issues, as noted by Vincent Delitz, co-founder of German tech startup Corbado, who first documented the arrival of passkey support on Amazon. Delitz noted that there is currently no support for passkeys in Amazon’s native apps, such as Amazon’s shopping app or Prime Video, which TechCrunch has also checked, meaning you still have to use a password to sign-in (for now). What’s more, if you’ve set up a passkey but previously set up two-factor authentication (2FA), Amazon will still prompt you to enter a one-time verification code when logging in, a move Delitz said was “redundant,” since passkeys remove the need for 2FA as they are stored on your device.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Amazon Quietly Rolls Out Support for Passkeys, With a Catch
Like all big superheroes, Spider-Man has been played and voiced by a variety of different people over the decades. There’s a certain art to the wallcrawler that a number of voice actors have managed to perfect in recent years, and among those is longtime performer Yuri Lowenthal. Known for a number of roles during the…
Source: Gizmodo – Spider-Man 2’s Yuri Lowenthal on Growing to Be a Great Peter Parker
Blue Origin revealed plans for a new spacecraft platform with the potential to reshape in-space logistics, offering unprecedented maneuverability and a host of advanced capabilities.
Source: Gizmodo – Blue Origin Announces Next-Gen Space Tug for In-Space Deliveries
Making a graham cracker crust for your no-bake pies and cheesecakes is a bit old hat these days. Usher in this festive season with a crumb crust that’s far from ordinary, but familiar at the same time. This crust provides a unique texture, and it just might be the easiest crumb crust out there. You can make a press-in…
Source: LifeHacker – Make Your Next Pie Crust With Pop-Tarts
ERNIE, Baidu’s answer to ChatGPT, has “achieved a full upgrade,” company CEO Robin Li told the assembled crowd at the Baidu World 2023 showcase on Tuesday, “with drastically improved performance in understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory.”
During his keynote address, Li demonstrated improvements to those four core capabilities on-stage by having the AI create a multimodal car commercial in a few minutes based on a short text prompt , solve complex geometry problems and progressively iterate the plot for a short story on the spot. The fourth-gen generative AI system “is not inferior in any aspect to GPT-4,” he continued.
ERNIE 4.0 will offer an “improved” search experience resembling that of Google’s SGE, aggregating and summarizing information pulled from the wider web and distilled into a generated response.The system will be multimodal, providing answers as text, images or animated graphs through an “interactive chat interface for more complex searches, enabling users to iteratively refine their queries until reaching the optimal answer, all in one search interface,” per the company’s press. What’s more, the AI will be able to recommend “highly customized” content streams based on previous interactions with the user.
Similar to ChatGPT Enterprise, ERNIE’s new Generative Business Intelligence will offer a more finely-tuned and secure model trained on each client’s individual data silo. ERNIE 4.0 will also be capable of, “conducting academic research, summarizing key information, creating documents, and generating slideshow presentations” as well as enable users to search and retrieve files using text and voice prompts.
Baidu is following the example set by the rest of the industry and has announced plans to put its generative AI in every app and service it can manage. The company has already integrated some of the AI’s functions into Baidu Maps, including navigation, ride hailing and hotel bookings. It is also offering “ow-threshold access and productivity tools” to help individuals and enterprises develop API plugins for the Baidu Qianfan Foundation Model Platform.
Baidu had already been developing its ERNIE large language model for a number of years prior to the debut of ChatGPT in 2022, though its knowledge-base is focused primarily on the Chinese market. Baidu released ERNIE Bot, it’s answer to ChatGPT, this March with some 550 billion facts packed into its knowledge graph, though it wasn’t until this August that it rolled out to the general public.
Baidu’s partner startups also showed off new product series that will integrate the AI’s functionality during the event, including a domestic robot, an All-in-One learning machine and a smart home speaker.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/baidus-ceo-says-its-ernie-ai-is-not-inferior-in-any-aspect-to-gpt-4-162333722.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Baidu’s CEO says its ERNIE AI ‘is not inferior in any aspect to GPT-4’
Hey, good news! It’s been a long time, but we finally got a new King Kong video game. Bad news, Skull Island: Rise of Kong appears an ugly mess of a thing and it might be the worst game of 2023. Yes, even worse than Gollum.
Source: Kotaku – New King Kong Game Is Very, Very Bad
New York Comic Con takes place every year at the massive Jacob Javits Center on the west side of Manhattan, and it never lets me down when it comes to cosplay. I’ve cosplayed there myself, though my look paled in comparison to the most impressive fits and mechanical feats on display at the annual convention.
Source: Kotaku – Our Fave Cosplay From New York Comic Con 2023
In this tutorial, we will discuss the two Tmux plugins that work together to save and restore your Tmux sessions with minimal configuration.
The post How to Save And Restore Tmux Environments Across Reboots in Linux appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – How to Save And Restore Tmux Environments Across Reboots in Linux
Netflix is getting into live sports streaming, but it’s not shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars on NFL games, Formula 1 races or the English Premier League quite yet. The company’s first live sports event is a pro-am golf tournament that features athletes from its Formula 1: Drive to Survive and Full Swing docuseries.
The Netflix Cup will see four pairs of Formula 1 drivers and PGA Tour golfers pairing up in a match play tournament that will take place in Las Vegas. You’ll be able to watch the event starting at 6PM ET on Tuesday, November 14 — just a few days before F1’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix.
As things stand, The Netflix Cup is set to feature F1 drivers Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly, Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz. The golf pros who have lined up to take part are Rickie Fowler, Max Homa, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas. The tournament will see the pro-am pairs play an eight-hole match. The top two teams will duke it out on a final hole to try and win the Netflix Cup.
“The continued success of Drive to Survive has played a significant role in the growth of Formula 1 in the US, which has ultimately led to the addition of a third American race,” Emily Prazer, chief commercial officer of Las Vegas Grand Prix, Inc, said in a statement. “It’s only fitting that we kick off our inaugural race weekend with a fun event that can be streamed by F1 and PGA Tour fans around the globe.”
This is a logical way for Netflix to dip its toes into live sports streaming. It means that the company doesn’t have to immediately snap up expensive rights to high-profile leagues (many of which have deals with rival streaming services anyway) or to showcase lower-tier sports.
It’s also another example of Netflix’s cross-branding coming to the forefront. The company is placing more focus on its own properties with things like a Squid Game reality competition series and branded retail stores that will feature an obstacle course based on its biggest hit to date. Netflix is also said to be developing more video game adaptations of its shows and movies, such as Extraction and Black Mirror.
Netflix’s first livestreamed event was a Chris Rock standup special. However, the company ran into technical problems with its second planned livestream, a Love is Blind cast reunion. The company instead filmed the reunion and uploaded it to the platform as quickly as it could. Netflix will be hoping things go more smoothly this time around.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-first-live-sports-event-is-a-golf-tournament-featuring-f1-drivers-and-pga-tour-pros-160042770.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Netflix’s first live sports event is a golf tournament featuring F1 drivers and PGA Tour pros
A top Chinese AI developer punished scores of staff who took a longer lunch break than allowed, reviving memories of the relentless work culture that plagued the country’s tech sector years ago. From a report: IFlytek this week fired off a companywide memo upbraiding more than a hundred employees it accused of abandoning their workstations to line up for free chicken lunches at the campus cafeteria.
As a disciplinary measure, those who took more than the allotted hour will get a “C” review rating, according to a copy of the memo that was posted online and verified by a company representative. The post drew more than 66 million views on Chinese social media platform Weibo and highlighted the immense pressures on the country’s AI sector, now the hottest slice of a tech arena still struggling to regain its footing since Beijing cracked down on the industry in late 2020.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – AI Developer Punishes Staff Who Took Long Lunch Breaks
Canon has recently revealed its FPA-1200NZ2C, a nanoimprint semiconductor manufacturing tool that can be used to make advanced chips. The device uses nanoimprint lithography (NIL) technology as an alternative to photolithography, and can theoretically challenge extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography tools when it comes to resolution.
Unlike traditional DUV and EUV photolithography equipment that transfers a circuit pattern onto a resist-coated wafer through projection, nanoimprint tool employs a different technique. It uses a mask, embossed with the circuit pattern, which directly presses against the resist on the wafer. This method eliminates the need for an optical mechanism in the pattern transfer process, which promises a more accurate reproduction of intricate circuit patterns from the mask to the wafer. In theory, NIL enables formation of complex two- or three-dimensional circuit patterns in a single step, which promises to lower costs. NIL itself is not a new technology, but it has remained in parallel development over the years, while the challenges involved in further improving photolithography have Canon believing that now is a good time for a second-look.
Canon says that its FPA-1200NZ2C enables patterning with a minimum linewidth (critical dimensions, CD) of 14 nm, which is good enough to ‘stamp’ a circa 26-nm minimum metal pitch, and therefore suitable for 5 nm-class process technologies. That would be in line with capabilities of ASML’s Twinscan NXE:3400C (and similar) EUV lithography scanners with a 0.33 numerical aperture (NA) optics.
Meanwhile, Canon says that further refinements of its technology, its tool can achieve finer resolutions that can enable 3 nm and even 2 nm-class production nodes.
Nanoimprint lithography offers several compelling advantages over photolithography. Primarily, NIL excels in resolution, enabling the creation of structures at the nanometer scale with remarkable precision without using photomasks. This technology bypasses the diffraction limits encountered in conventional photolithography, allowing for more intricate and smaller features. Additionally, NIL operates without the necessity of complex optics or high-energy radiation sources, leading to potentially lower operational costs and simpler equipment.
Another advantage of NIL is its direct patterning capability, enabling the reproduction of three-dimensional nanostructures effectively. Such functionality makes NIL a potent tool in the production of photonics and other applications where three-dimensional nano-patterns are essential. The technology also facilitates better pattern fidelity and uniformity.
However, NIL also presents certain challenges and limitations. One notable issue is its susceptibility to defects due to the direct contact involved in the imprinting process. Particles or contaminants present on the substrate or the mold can lead to defects, which may affect the overall yield and reliability of the manufacturing process. This necessitates impeccable process control and cleanliness to maintain consistent output quality.
Additionally, NIL, in its traditional form, is a serial process, which limits its throughput and production capacity. Unlike photolithography, which can process entire wafers or large areas in a parallel fashion, NIL often involves processing smaller areas sequentially. This poses great challenges in scaling the technology for high-volume manufacturing of chips, which limits its usage for chip manufacturing. Meanwhile, NIL can be used to create photomasks for EUV and DUV. Also, it can theoretically be used to create patterned media for hard disk drives.
Source: AnandTech – Canon Prepares Nanoimprint Lithography Tool To Challenge EUV Scanners
There are many ways to watch YouTube ad-free (I highly recommend YouTube Premium). But even if you shell out $13.99 per month to remove autoplay ads on YouTube, you still can’t get rid of sponsorship ads. No matter how you watch YouTube, a popular creator may still place an ad read in the middle of a video with no…
Source: LifeHacker – Use This Extension to Block Sponsored Ads on YouTube
Alan Wake is coming to Fortnite in a cross-promotional event ahead of the 2010 game’s long-awaited sequel. Alan Wake: Flashback “reimagines Remedy Entertainment’s iconic story in Fortnite” as Epic Games and Remedy Entertainment introduce younger players to a franchise that faded in and out of public consciousness before some of them were born.
The game within a game appears to provide a quick recap of the events of the first title within Fortnite. “Troubled author Alan Wake embarks on a desperate search for his missing wife, Alice,” Epic’s description reads. “Following her mysterious disappearance from the Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls, he discovers pages of a horror story he has supposedly written, but has no memory of.”
The surreal pairing becomes more logical when you consider Epic and Alan Wake developer Remedy have a working relationship. Remedy signed a publishing agreement with Epic in 2020 in a program covering up to 100 percent of a title’s development costs, including paying for quality assurance, localization and marketing. Once a game recovers its development costs, the companies split their profits 50/50. So, the Fortnite tie-in is a win-win for both companies’ bottom lines.
Alan Wake will also be a playable character via an Alan Wake Outfit. It will launch in the “Waking Nightmare” set available on the Fortnite shop beginning on October 26. Meanwhile, Alan Wake 2 launches for $50 on October 27 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC via the Epic Store.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/alan-wake-brings-his-flashlight-to-fortnite-155907947.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Alan Wake brings his flashlight to Fortnite
Nearly 60 years to the day that Doctor Who began airing, next month, the BBC will launch an unprecedented collection of over 800 episodes from the show’s distant and not-so-distant past on its streaming platform, iPlayer—the first of its kind from the corporation. But it turns out that the very first story that kicked…
Source: Gizmodo – Doctor Who’s Very First Story Won’t Be a Part of the BBC’s Streaming Archive
Enlarge / Moments like this are practically worth the price of admission. (credit: Insomniac / Sony)
When making a sequel to a successful game franchise, developers have to walk a tightrope between continuity and upgrades. Change too much, and you risk ruining the careful balance of elements that made the original game work so well. Change too little, and you risk players getting tired of a new title that feels like more of the same.
As much as we liked 2020’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the game provided only minor tweaks to the successful formula established by Insomniac’s original 2018 take on everyone’s favorite wall-crawler. Spider-Man 2 is a slightly meatier sequel, with a bigger version of New York City to explore and a few welcome improvements in presentation and gameplay. Even so, the game still fits quite comfortably into the “more of the same” side of the sequel equation.
But we can’t say we’re too upset about this state of affairs. The basic open-world superheroics of Insomniac’s Spider-Man are so strong that this sequel can get by quite capably with a bit of tinkering at the margins. After three full games, it turns out we’re still not tired of defending Insomniac’s take on New York City.
Pretty much every piece of pre-release hype for Spider-Man 2 focused on how the pairing of two separate Spider-Men–Peter Parker and Miles Morales–would implicitly lead to twice as much fun. It’s unfortunate, then, that the long-promised team-up feels more than a little forced here.
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Source: Ars Technica – Spider-Man 2 review: Best-in-class comic action melodrama
After nearly 25 years of being one of the most recognizable voices and faces of Bethesda Softworks, Pete Hines announced he is leaving the company and retiring from the videogame industry altogether. Hines said his decision did not come quickly or easily, but after the successful launch of Starfield, he just felt the time was right.
Hines
Source: Hot Hardware – Now That Starfield Is Out, Bethesda’s Pete Hines Calls It A Career
