When protests in Pakistan earlier this year escalated into clashes between pro-government forces and supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the now-imprisoned leader turned to social media to bolster his message. Khan shared this brief video clip on Twitter showing his supporters holding up signs with his…
Source: Gizmodo – Generative AI Is the Newest Tool in the Dictator’s Handbook
Step-by-step guide to install Mixxx (DJ Software) on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish utilizing the Mixxx PPA.
Source: LXer – How to install Mixxx on Ubuntu 22.04
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Crime predictions generated for the police department in Plainfield, New Jersey, rarely lined up with reported crimes, an analysis by The Markup has found, adding new context to the debate over the efficacy of crime prediction software. Geolitica, known as PredPol until a 2021 rebrand, produces software that ingests data from crime incident reports and produces daily predictions on where and when crimes are most likely to occur. We examined 23,631 predictions generated by Geolitica between February 25 and December 18, 2018, for the Plainfield Police Department (PD). Each prediction we analyzed from the company’s algorithm indicated that one type of crime was likely to occur in a location not patrolled by Plainfield PD. In the end, the success rate was less than half a percent. Fewer than 100 of the predictions lined up with a crime in the predicted category, that was also later reported to police. Diving deeper, we looked at predictions specifically for robberies or aggravated assaults that were likely to occur in Plainfield and found a similarly low success rate: 0.6 percent. The pattern was even worse when we looked at burglary predictions, which had a success rate of 0.1 percent.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Predictive Policing Software Terrible At Predicting Crimes
As per usual, Donald Trump just can’t shut up—and it’s causing him, and everybody around him, major problems.
Source: Gizmodo – Judge Issues Gag Order After Trump Refers to Court Clerk as Chuck “Schumer’s Girlfriend”
Why is creating object graphs hard in Rust? Here’s a closer look at the different approaches to creating object soups in Rust.
The post Persian Rug: Other Ways to Make Object Soups in Rust appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Persian Rug: Other Ways to Make Object Soups in Rust
A Tokyo startup has developed a 4.5-meter-tall, four-wheeled robot modeled after the “Mobile Suit Gundam” from the Japanese animation series. It has a price tag of $3 million. Reuters reports: Called ARCHAX after the avian dinosaur archaeopteryx, the robot has cockpit monitors that receive images from cameras hooked up to the exterior so that the pilot can maneuver the arms and hands with joysticks from inside its torso. The 3.5-ton robot, which will be unveiled at the Japan Mobility Show later this month, has two modes: the upright ‘robot mode’ and a ‘vehicle mode’ in which it can travel up to 10 km (6 miles) per hour.
“Japan is very good at animation, games, robots and automobiles so I thought it would be great if I could create a product that compressed all these elements into one,” said Ryo Yoshida, the 25-year-old chief executive of Tsubame Industries. “I wanted to create something that says, ‘This is Japan.'” Yoshida plans to build and sell five of the machines for the well-heeled robot fan, but hopes the robot could one day be used for disaster relief or in the space industry.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Japan Startup Develops ‘Gundam’-Like Robot With Million Price Tag
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the installation process of WordPress using the LEMP Stack (comprising Nginx, MariaDB, and PHP) on the Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish operating system. We’ll also provide detailed steps to help you set up the necessary databases and complete the front-end Web UI installation efficiently and effectively.
Source: LXer – How to Install WordPress with Nginx, MariaDB and PHP on Ubuntu 22.04
If you’re looking for the Connections answer for Wednesday, October 4, 2023, read on—I’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solutions to all four categories. Beware, there are spoilers below for October 4, NYT Connections #115! Read on if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s…
Source: LifeHacker – Today’s NYT Connections Hints (and Answer) for Wednesday, October 4, 2023
In a move to strengthen its chip supply chain, Japan announced it will provide up to $1.3 billion in additional subsidies for U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology’s plant in Hiroshima Prefecture. The Japan Times reports: The move, which comes on top of the up to 46.5 billion yen aid announced earlier, adds to Japan’s efforts to ensure a stable supply of chips at a time when rising tensions between the United States and China are increasingly posing a threat to its economic security. Micron has said it plans to invest up to 500 billion yen in Japan in the next few years and will become the first chipmaker to introduce extreme ultraviolet lithography machines — state-of-the-art equipment for manufacturing advanced semiconductors — in Japan. The company is slated to start mass production of next-generation 1-gamma dynamic random access memory chips in 2026.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Japan To Provide .3 Billion In Extra Aid To US Chipmaker Micron
The moment is upon us: Rebels have reunited, Thrawn’s grand design has been put into motion, and everyone just wants to get back to the galaxy that’s a little less far, far away than the one they’re currently in. Ahsoka’s finale is here, and… well, there’s a lot that needs sorting out.
Source: Gizmodo – The Heir of an Empire Rises in Our Ahsoka Finale Discussion Zone
Enlarge / Astrobotic’s first lunar lander, named Peregrine, is complete and ready for shipment to the launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida. (credit: Astrobotic)
Within a few months, NASA may celebrate the first successful landing of an American spacecraft on the Moon in more than 50 years. This would be an immense confidence boost for commercial startups with an eye on the nascent market for lunar missions. It would also signal to NASA that it can rely on commercial companies for foundational elements of the agency’s Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.
Realistically, there’s also a chance that the first two commercial robotic lunar landing missions may miss the mark. One or both could crash on the lunar surface or otherwise falter along the journey from the Earth to the Moon. This wouldn’t be a disaster. NASA officials have smartly set low expectations for these early commercial lunar missions, but these first landers are several years late, and a series of failures would inevitably raise questions about the program’s future.
Five years after NASA started the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, two companies finally have lunar landers ready for final launch preparations. Astrobotic’s robotic Moon lander, Peregrine, has been in storage since March at the company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh. This week, Intuitive Machines showed off its completed Nova-C lander to Ars in Houston.
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Source: Ars Technica – It’s crunch time for companies building NASA’s commercial lunar landers
Tom Warren writes via The Verge: Microsoft is announcing the third generation of its OneDrive cloud storage today, complete with the company’s AI-powered Copilot system, a Fluent design refresh, and big improvements to the way businesses share and use cloud documents. […] Microsoft is overhauling the main OneDrive web app with a new Fluent design. It more closely matches the Windows 11 interface and recent changes to Office apps, and it also fits in with the latest File Explorer design updates. There is now an AI-powered file recommendations “For you” section up the top, much like File Explorer. Files that matter to your workday are surfaced here immediately and can appear here whether they’re in your OneDrive, Teams, or elsewhere. […] You can also now choose the colors of your folders, and when you share with co-workers, they will also see the color choice. […]
One thing many OneDrive business users have been asking for is the ability to open any document from OneDrive on the web into the native desktop apps. Microsoft is adding this feature in December, with the ability to open things like CAD files or PDFs. Microsoft is also adding a new media view that includes all photos and video assets in a single location. This new OneDrive experience will also soon be available in the files section of Microsoft Teams and the file navigation part of Outlook. Microsoft expects the new OneDrive in Outlook view to be available in December.
Microsoft is also planning to integrate its Copilot AI system into OneDrive in December for everyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Copilot will offer up a daily digest of files, like a catch-up feature for documents you and your colleagues are working on. This will include a list of important changes to files and a summarized look at new comments. Microsoft says it will intelligently organize these summaries based on context and relevance. Most of the interface changes can be experienced now at onedrive.com, with more arriving in early 2024. You can view the full list of changes here.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Microsoft Overhauls OneDrive With a Big New Design, AI Copilot Integration
Symfony is one of the most popular PHP frameworks used for web applications. This tutorial will show you how to install the Symfony PHP framework on Ubuntu 22.04.
Source: LXer – How to Install Symfony PHP Framework on Ubuntu 22.04
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: HMD Global, the phone maker and marketer behind the Nokia mobile phone brand, has launched its very first smartphone manufactured in Europe. The news comes some six months after the Finnish company first revealed it was transitioning some of its manufacturing to Europe to meet a growing demand from enterprises for locally produced hardware to address security and sustainability concerns. HMD Global hadn’t revealed where, exactly, it was manufacturing in Europe, with the company telling TechCrunch in February that it was keeping the facility under wraps due to security concerns.
“Unfortunately, due to our customers being in various security-conscious industries, we’re not allowed to tell anyone which countries we are producing these devices in, simply to keep it as secure as possible,” HMD Global chief marketing officer Lars Silberbauer said at the time. However, the company has now seemingly had second thoughts on that, and it has confirmed at least one of its manufacturing locations is in Hungary. A spokesperson told TechCrunch that it still can’t reveal where exactly in Hungary the manufacturing facility is, though they did note that they will be adding further manufacturing and assembly capacity to additional locales in Europe.
The first device off the line is the 5G Nokia XR21, which is available for enterprises to buy today. This is pretty much the same as the XR21 that launched earlier this year, except the new variant has been assembled in Europe and HMD Global can offer enterprise customers a “higher level of security assurance through customized software and security features,” a spokesperson said, adding that they are working with a number of additional IT security partners. Additionally, the company is making 30 limited edition versions of these devices available to the general public through the online Nokia store for consumers in the U.K., France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Finland, with a sticker price of 699 euros. It also plans to launch a standard (i.e., non-limited edition) of the European XR21 smartphone for consumers, which will be available in black.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – HMD Global Starts Manufacturing In Europe With the ‘Made In Hungary’ Nokia Phone
After tackling the Halloween universe, director David Gordon Green set his sights on re-imagining The Exorcist for a new generation with The Exorcist: Believer.
Source: Gizmodo – David Gordon Green on Finding the Truth inThe Exorcist: Believer’s Horror
After taking a year off to regroup on its mid-range offerings, Samsung is reinvigorating its Fan Edition line by announcing its plans to offer cheaper and somewhat pared-down versions of its mainline Galaxy S23 phone, Tab S9 tablet, and Galaxy earbuds.
Source: Gizmodo – Samsung’s Mid-Range FE Line Returns With S23 Phones and Tab S9 Tablets
Intel this afternoon has announced that the company will be spinning off its programmable solutions group (PSG), to operate as a standalone business. The business unit, responsible for developing Intel’s Agilex, Stratix, and other FPGA products, will become a standalone entity under Intel’s corporate umbrella starting in Q1 of 2024, with the long-term goal of eventually selling off part of the group in an IPO in two to three years’ time.
The reorganization announced today will see Intel’s PSG transition to operating as a standalone business unit at the start of 2024, with Intel EVP Sandra Rivera heading up PSG as its new CEO. Rivera is currently the general manager of Intel’s Data Center and AI Group (DCAI), which is where PSG is currently housed, so she has significant familiarity with the group. In the interim, Rivera will also continue serving in her role in DCAI until Intel can find a replacement, with the company looking for candidates both externally and internally.
The separating of PSG is the latest move from Intel to reorganize the company’s multi-faceted business in an effort to focus on its core competencies of silicon photolithography and chip design. Since bringing on current CEO Pat Gelsinger two years ago, Intel has sold or spun off several business units, including its SSD business, NUC mini-PC business, Mobileye ADAS unit, and others, all the while making significant new investments in Intel’s Foundry Services (IFS) fab division. Though, unlike some of Intel’s other divestments, it’s notable that the company isn’t separating from PSG because the business unit is underperforming or is in a commoditized, low-margin market – rather, Intel thinks PSG could perform even better without the immense business and bureaucratic weight of Intel hanging over it.
For the standalone PSG business unit, Intel is eyeing a very similar track to how they’ve handled Mobileye, which will see Intel maintaining majority ownership while still freeing up the business unit to operate more independently. This strategy has played out very well for Mobileye, with the company enjoying continued commercial growth while successfully IPOing last year, and which Intel is hoping they can achieve again with a standalone PSG.
This business unit separation comes as Intel, by their own admittance, has mismanaged PSG. While PSG has enjoyed a string of record quarters financially, Intel believes that PSG has been underserving the true high growth, high profitability markets for FPGAs, such as industrial, automotive, defense, and aerospace. Since being acquired by Intel in 2015 – and especially in the last few years as a formal part of DCAI – Intel’s PSG has been focused on datacenter solutions, to the detriment of other business segments.
Reforming PSG as a standalone business unit, in turn, is intended to improve the agility of the business unit. While PSG will remain under the ownership of Intel both now and in the future, Intel’s control over the group will be largely reduced to that of an investor. This will leave Sandra Rivera and her leadership team free to adjust the company’s product portfolio and positioning as to best serve the wider FPGA market, and not just Intel’s datacenter-centric ambitions. Meanwhile, if all goes well, over the long-haul Intel gets to pocket the profits of a successful IPO while having one less business unit to manage, allowing Intel to funnel its money and time into its own higher priority ventures such as fabs.
Keeping in mind that the PSG was an acquisition for Intel in the first place, in some respects this is an unwinding of that acquisition. In 2015 Intel paid $16.7 billion for what was then Altera, which under Intel became the PSG as we know it today. And while Intel’s eventual IPO plans for PSG have them retaining a stake in the business unit – and a majority stake, at that – this very much re-separates PSG/Altera in terms of operations.
Still, PSG/Altera has a very long history with Intel, going all the way back to 1984, and even as a standalone business unit, PSG will still be tied closely to Intel. Altera will be free to use whatever contract fab it would like, but as the company has been under Intel’s umbrella all this time, it is no surprise that many of the company’s upcoming products are slated to be built at Intel’s fabs, where PSG is expecting to leverage Intel’s advanced packaging techniques. And over the longer term, as Intel lays the groundwork to become the top contract fab in the world, it’s Intel’s hope that they’ll be able to keep PSG’s business.
At the same time, however, PSG will need to win back the business it has lost in the last several years due to its datecenter focus under Intel. The FPGA space is highly competitive, with arch rival AMD having acquired Xilinx in 2020, and who is starting to reap some of the first benefits of that acquisition and integration. Meanwhile in the low power FPGA space, fellow Oregon firm Lattice Semiconductor is not to be underestimated. Intel believes the FPGA market is primed for significant growth – on the order of a “high single digit” compound annual growth rate – so it’s not just a matter of winning back existing dollars from PSG’s rivals. But they’ll have to win back mindshare as well, a task that may take a significant amount of time as the FPGA market moves much slower and offers much longer-lived products than the CPU market.
But first, PSG must get ready to stand on its own two feet. PSG will transition to operating as a standalone business unit at the start of 2024, and it will be reported as such on Intel’s financial statements. Meanwhile, Intel is looking to bring on an initial external investor in 2024, to act as an outside resource to help prepare the group for an eventual IPO. According to Intel, PSG will need two to three years to develop the financial history and leadership stability for a successful IPO, which is why Intel is focusing on making the business unit standalone now, while eyeing an IPO a few years down the line.
Finally, for now it remains to be seen what the standalone PSG will be calling itself. As “programmable solutions group” is arguably unsuitable as a business name, expect to see PSG renamed. Whether that means resurrecting the Altera name or coming up with a new name entirely, as part of standing up on its own two feet, Intel’s FPGA business will need an identity of its own to become a business of its own.
Source: AnandTech – Intel to Spin-off Programmable Solutions Group as Standalone Business, Eyeing IPO in 2-3 Years
Meta is planning to lay off employees on Wednesday in the unit of its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division focused on creating custom silicon, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: Employees were informed of the layoffs in a post on Meta’s internal discussion forum Workplace on Tuesday. The post said they would be notified about their status with the company by early Wednesday morning, one of the sources said. Reuters was not able to determine the extent of the cuts to the silicon unit, called Facebook Agile Silicon Team, or FAST, which has roughly 600 employees, according to the other source. The FAST unit is tasked with developing custom chips to power the augmented and virtual reality hardware produced by Meta’s Reality Labs division. Meta currently makes a line of mixed reality headsets called Quest and smart glasses designed with Ray-Ban eyeglass maker EssilorLuxottica that can stream video and speak with wearers through a new artificial intelligence virtual assistant.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Meta To Lay Off Employees in Metaverse Silicon Unit Tomorrow
You can get a lifetime subscription to both Rosetta Stone and Microsoft Office on sale for $199 right now. Rosetta Stone has beginner and intermediate lessons for 25 languages, including French, Italian, German, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, and Filipino, and users can select one language at a time and switch languages…
Source: LifeHacker – You Can Get Rosetta Stone and Microsoft Office Together for 0
