The first season of Invincible was a fun, delightful little show about young Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) coming into his own as a superhero and trying to live up to the legacy of his father Omni-Man (JK Simmons). It was also extremely violent right out the gate, in ways that often made for incredible animated superhero…
Source: Gizmodo – Invincible’s Season 2 Trailer is All About the Bloody Fights to Come
The singer known as Tomberlin says their first five years in the music industry may have been a net loss, according to MarketWatch. Selling “merch[andise]” like t-shirts “is what really is covering your costs and hopefully helping you make, like, an actual profit.”
And then…
After being told she would have to hand over more than 40% of the money she collected from selling T-shirts and other items, Tomberlin refused to sell her merchandise at the venue and publicly spoke about a practice she calls robbery — venues taking cuts from bands’ merchandise sales… Other musicians are also speaking out about the practice, and their complaints seem to be having an effect. Industry giant Live Nation Entertainment Inc. announced recently that it would stop collecting merch fees at nearly 80 of the smaller clubs it owns and operates and provide all bands that play at those venues with an additional $1,500 in gas cards and cash.
Musicians who spoke with MarketWatch remain unsatisfied, however. Because of the way the announcement is phrased, many think merch fees at Live Nation clubs are only being paused until the end of the year. The musicians said they also wonder about the roughly 250 other Live Nation concert facilities, as well as the hundreds of venues owned by other companies. A Live Nation spokesperson told MarketWatch the change is “open-ended.”
[…] As Tomberlin continues on her current tour, she wonders if she will be able to make a profitable career in music. Of all her ways of earning money, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music provide “the least amount of money,” she said, and with tours not leaving her with any cash at the end, she feels that even modest ambitions are out of reach.
Musician Laura Jane Grace is even soliciting signers for an online petition demanding venues stop taking cuts of the musicians’ merchandise sales…
Thanks to Slashdot reader quonset for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Musicians Are Angry About Venues Taking T-shirt Money
Ever since Mortal Kombat 9, NetherRealm Studios has thrown in a crossover character or three into their fighting games. The Injustice games have had Hellboy and the Ninja Turtles, for example, but the Mortal Kombat games have been especially cameo-heavy in this regard: Mortal Kombat X featured Alien, Predator, and Leat…
Source: Gizmodo – Omni-Man’s Mortal Kombat 1 Debut Is as Bloody as You’d Expect (and Want)
“To meet the world’s growing hunger for chips, a startup wants to upend the costly semiconductor fabrication plant with a nimbler, cheaper idea…” reports Fast Company, “an AI-enabled chip factory that can be assembled and expanded modularly with prefab pieces, like high-tech Lego bricks.”
In other words, they want to enable what is literally a fast company…
“We’re democratizing the ownership of semiconductor fabs,” says Matthew Putman, referring to chip fabrication plants. Putman is the founder and CEO of Nanotronics, a New York City-based industrial AI company that deploys advanced optical solutions for detecting defects in manufacturing procedures. Its new system, called Cubefabs, combines its modular inspection tools and other equipment with AI, allowing the proposed chip factories to monitor themselves and adapt accordingly — part of what Putman calls an “autonomous factory.” The bulk of the facility can be preassembled, flat-packed and put in shipping containers so that the facilities can be built “in 80% of the world,” says Putman.
Eventually, the company envisions hundreds of the flower-shaped fabs around the world, starting with a prototype in New York or Kuwait that it hopes to start building by the end of the year… Nanotronics says a single Cubefab installation could start at one acre with a single fab, and grow to a four-fab, six-acre footprint. Each fab could be built in under a year, the company says, with a four-fab installation estimated to cost under $100 million. Nanotronics declined to disclose how much it has raised for the project, but Putman says the company has previously raised $170 million from investors, including Peter Thiel and Jann Tallin, the Skype cofounder…
A single automated Cubefab will need only about 30 people to operate, “and they don’t have to be semiconductor experts,” says Putman. “AI takes away that need for that specialization that you would normally need in a fab.” […] Putman also hopes automation will help further reduce the environmental impact of an industry that’s notoriously resource-intensive and produces thousands of tons of waste a year, much of it hazardous. “Because you have the AI fixing the material and the device before it’s manufactured, you have less waste of the final material,” he says.
Thanks to Slashdot reader tedlistens for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Startup Aims to Build Hundreds of Chip Factories with Prefab Parts and AI
X’s firing of an employee who pushed back against a return-to-office policy imposed by Elon Musk last year was illegal, the National Labor Relations Board alleges. In what Bloomberg reports is the NLRB’s first formal complaint against X Corp., filed on Friday, the labor board accused the company of retaliating against software engineer Yao Yue for attempting to organize workers in the wake of the new policy. After Musk gave then-Twitter employees an ultimatum in November 2022 to return to the office, Yue urged others not to resign in response but instead “let him fire you.”
Musk at the time had told employees, “If you can physically make it to an office and you don’t show up, resignation accepted.” Yue was fired five days after tweeting about it and writing a similar post on Slack. In terminating her, the complaint filed by a San Francisco branch of the NLRB alleges the company violated federal labor law by “interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees” exercising protected rights, according to CNBC. A hearing is now set for January 30.
Don’t resign, let him fire you. You gain literally nothing out of a resignation. https://t.co/4OcZKag0UZ
— Yao Yue 岳峣 (@thinkingfish) November 10, 2022
The formal NLRB complaint may be a first for X, but accusations of retaliation against employees are nothing new for a Musk-helmed company. In early 2023, Tesla workers in Buffalo, New York accused the company of firing them for unionizing, and eight SpaceX employees filed a complaint with the NLRB in 2022 claiming they were terminated for criticizing Musk.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-labor-board-says-x-illegally-fired-a-worker-in-retaliation-for-critical-tweet-183132363.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – US labor board says X illegally fired a worker in retaliation for critical tweet
Whether you need to deck out a home office, spice up a gaming battle station, or enhance your workflow, adding an extra monitor or two will certainly do the trick. Thankfully, Amazon still has some left-over deals from Prime Day, which can net you some big savings on a number of Samsung monitors geared towards gaming or productivity.
Starting
Source: Hot Hardware – Samsung Office And Gaming Monitor Deals Up To 43% Off Left Over From Amazon Prime Day
All Things Open 2022 was the conference’s 10th outing, and with Covid waning, things were looked a lot more like normal.
The post At All Things Open 2022, the In-Person Audience Returned En Masse appeared first on FOSS Force.
Source: FOSS Force – At All Things Open 2022, the In-Person Audience Returned En Masse
“LaKeith [Stanfield] came into The Changeling with such dedication,” said Jonathan Van Tulleken, an executive producer/director on The Changeling. “I think it’s very rare to see an actor who brings his level of commitment to the set, and who is always digging through sort of the personal resonance in himself as well…
Source: Gizmodo – The Changeling’s Directors Give LaKeith Stanfield His Flowers
It’s clear that Intel’s upcoming 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs aren’t far away (especially if recent retail listings are any indicator). Presumably that also means Intel’s motherboard partners are readying their boards for the impending launch. This definitely seems to be the case for MSI, which recently released a BIOS update with a new
Source: Hot Hardware – MSI Rolls Out Z790 Max Motherboard Feature That Lets Intel CPUs Sizzle
From the South China Morning Post:
Scientists in China say their latest quantum computer has solved an ultra-complicated mathematical problem within a millionth of a second — more than 20 billion years quicker than the world’s fastest supercomputer could achieve the same task. The JiuZhang 3 prototype also smashed the record set by its predecessor in the series, with a one million-fold increase in calculation speed, according to a paper published on Tuesday by the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters…
The series uses photons — tiny particles that travel at the speed of light — as the physical medium for calculations, with each one carrying a qubit, the basic unit of quantum information… The fastest classical supercomputer Frontier — developed in the US and named the world’s most powerful in mid-2022 — would take over 20 billion years to complete the same task, the researchers said.
The article claims they’ve increased the number of photons from 76 to 113 in the first two versions, improving to 255 in the latest iteration.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Chinese Scientists Claim Record-Smashing Quantum Computing Breakthrough
Highly anticipated video game releases are always exciting, even when we’re still in the rumor phase. If they are part of a dynasty, the story gets more intense. Enter Grand Theft Auto VI, the next installment of one of the most famous franchises in history. While the connoisseurs amongst you wait to hear about the story and gameplay, there’s
Source: Hot Hardware – Report Claims GTA 6 Graphics Are Going To Be Cutting-Edge And Gorgeous
Dragon Ball Super’s anime adaptation ended over five years ago, and though the franchise has been kept alive with various games, movies, and a web series, there hasn’t had a proper mainline anime installment since. Fortunately, that’s about to change in a big way with the release of Dragon Ball Daima.
Source: Gizmodo – Dragon Ball Daima Brings Back the Z Warriors in Kid-Sized Glory
Whether it’s a colleague, friend, or family member, asking someone to do something can be intimidating. So, when the person responds to your request with something noncommittal like “I’ll look into it,” we may leave it there, without pressing them for a timeline.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Respond When Someone Says They’ll ‘Look Into’ Your Request (but They Don’t)
Over the decades, there’ve been various interpretations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in film and TV. Some stories play things fairly straight, but others offer some kind of new (and often humorous) take on the titular monster: what if the monster were one of Dracula’s best friends, or what if he was tasked with savin…
Source: Gizmodo – Lisa Frankenstein Will Be Aliiiiiiive!!! with Love in 2024
Learn what’s new in Lubuntu 23.10 “Mactic Minotaur”, which brings the latest LXQt 1.30 desktop and updates.
Source: LXer – Lubuntu 23.10 “Mantic Minotaur”: Best New Features
Yesterday America’s Federal Trade Commission said it remained focused on its appeal opposing Microsoft’s deal to buy Activision, reports Reuters.
Reuters notes that Microsoft and Activision closed their transaction Friday “after winning approval from Britain on condition that they sell the streaming rights to Activision’s games to Ubisoft Entertainment.” But the U.S. Federal Trade Commission “has also fought the deal, and has an argument scheduled before an appeals court on December 6. The agency said on Friday that it remained focused on that appeal.” An FTC spokesperson had this comment for Reuters.
“The FTC continues to believe this deal is a threat to competition.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – US Antitrust Enforcer Continues Fighting Microsoft/Activision Deal, Calls it ‘A Threat to Competition’
Author Victor LaValle and showrunner Kelly Marcel spoke to io9 at a press line after the panel for Apple TV+’s adaptation of The Changeling, talking about how to work within the confines of the novel, and when to push the boundaries of what’s on the page.
Source: Gizmodo – Victor LaValle on Bringing Women’s Perspectives Into The Changeling
The first season of Daryl Dixon, a Walking Dead spinoff featuring Norman Reedus’ incredibly popular character, was primarily filmed in France. This is a far cry from the Senoia, Georgia locale where The Walking Dead had been filmed for nearly a decade. When the team landed in Europe, they quickly found out that the…
Source: Gizmodo – The French Crew of Daryl Dixon Took Their Time With Production
An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:
After a nasty battle between the developers of third-party apps and Reddit management, ultimately resulting in a site-wide protest, many app makers were put out of business due to Reddit’s price increases related to the usage of its API. Though the changes meant the loss of popular apps like Apollo, RIF (Reddit is Fun), ReddPlanent, Sync and BaconReader, one app, Narwhal, is attempting to make a comeback. The company announced this week that it will implement a subscription-based version of its app at $3.99 per month, promising an ad-free and privacy-focused experience.
The new app will also include a Tip Jar to solicit donations to help keep the app afloat beyond the subscription fees and fund additional development work. Though not available at launch, the app’s developer Rick Harrison (u/det0ur on Reddit and CTO at Meadow by day) says he’s considering adding a small fee, perhaps $1 per month, to allow users to also check their notifications and messages… Notes Narwhal’s developer, Reddit’s fee will be “tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands a month depending on how many people subscribe.” To work, the app will need a critical mass of subscribers to cover its costs, but Harrison says he’s fairly confident the model will work.
“Also, with a simpler plan like this, I can offer a subscription on a Narwhal website for 30% less (no Apple cut),” Harrison wrote…
Narwhal isn’t the only Reddit client to attempt to remain in business despite Reddit’s API pricing changes. Another, Relay, announced a multi-tier subscription plan where users have to choose one of six price points, each that caps them at a certain number of API calls.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Third-party Reddit App Narwhal Hopes To Survive Reddit’s App Purge With Subscriptions
Similar to the Radeon RADV driver recently implementing software-based decoding for Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC), the Intel “ANV” Vulkan driver within Mesa has also now wired up ASTC LDR emulation…
Source: Phoronix – Intel Vulkan Driver Lands ASTC LDR Emulation For Latest GPUs