Following a successful debut last year, we’re getting a second Prime Day from Amazon this year as well. Amazon is referring to this second event as the Prime Big Deal Days and it will run from 3 a.m EST on Tuesday October 10 through 3 a.m. EST on Wednesday October 11. The first, bigger, Prime Day sale ran from July…
Source: Gizmodo – Everything You Need to Know About Amazon’s Next Prime Day in October
Earlier this year, Dungeons & Dragons released the supplemental lorebook/bestiary, Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants. Fans were quick to point out that some of the illustrations looked… off. After answering some questions on X/Twitter, artist Ilya Shkipin explained that yes, he did use generative AI to assist his…
Source: Gizmodo – Dungeons & Dragons Updates Bigby to Replace AI-Enhanced Images
In terms of value, it’s tough to beat Apple Arcade. The service costs $5 per month following a one-month free trial, or comes as part of an Apple One subscription. Heck, if you bought an Apple device recently, like an iPhone 15, you get three months of Apple Arcade free. But whether you’re rocking your free trial, or…
Source: LifeHacker – These Four New Games Are Coming to Apple Arcade This Month
Enlarge / Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work using attosecond pulses to study the dynamics of electrons inside atoms. (credit: Niklas Elmehed/Nobel Prize Outreach)
Electrons move and change energies at such a blistering speed that physicists long believed it would never be possible to capture their dynamics, even with the fastest lasers. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics to three scientists who used ultrafast pulses of light to do just that with a technique known as attosecond spectroscopy. Per the citation, Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier “have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms.”
It’s well known that to capture detailed images of, say, a hummingbird mid-flight, one needs to use exposure times that are shorter than a single beat of the hummingbird’s wings. But atoms in a molecule move in billionths of a second, aka femtoseconds; electrons move and change energies faster, between one and a few hundred attoseconds. (An attosecond is one billionth of a billionth of a second.) If you sent a flash of light from one end of a room to the other, it would take 10 billion attoseconds. Physicists had long believed that a femtosecond was the fundamental limit for producing short bursts of light—at least with existing technology—and thus capturing the behavior of electrons in atoms was beyond reach.
That changed over the last 20 years. “The ability to generate attoseconds of light has opened the door on an extremely tiny timescale, and it also opened the door to the world of electrons,” said Eva Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee for physics, at the press conference announcing the prize. “Back in 1925, Werner Heisenberg argued that this world cannot be seen. Thanks to attosecond physics, this is now starting to change.” The work is expected to have a significant impact on electronics, where understanding and controlling how electrons behave in materials is critical to achieving faster electronics, as well as in medical diagnostics, which requires being able to identify different molecules.
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Source: Ars Technica – A new “time window”: Meet the winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics
A team of astronomers have detected over 500 planet-like objects in the inner Orion Nebula and the Trapezium Cluster that they believe could shake up the very definition of a planet.
Source: Gizmodo – Quasi-Planets Called JuMBOs Are Bopping Around in Space
Zoom is setting out to compete with Google and Microsoft by introducing Zoom Docs at its annual Zoomtopia 2023 event on Tuesday. Zoom Docs is the company’s own version of an AI-powered workspace that will provide users with AI capabilities to draft, edit, summarize, and include information from meeting discussions.
Source: Gizmodo – Zoom Is Launching Its Own Google Docs Competitor
A new investigation shows that YouTube has a bug that allows users to upload hardcore pornography to its platform. To make matters funnier, it isn’t exactly clear that YouTube knows how to fix the bug or that it is capable of taking down all the explicit material that has been uploaded.
Source: Gizmodo – A YouTube Bug Is Allowing Users to Upload Hardcore Porn
In this tutorial, we will demonstrate the steps for how to install Wine 8.0 from WineHQ on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.
The post How to Install Wine on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – How to Install Wine on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Jazz Tangcay writes via Variety: Visual effects workers at Walt Disney Pictures have voted unanimously in favor of unionizing with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) in an election held by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The 13-0 vote comes just weeks after VFX workers at Marvel Studios voted to unionize with IATSE and comes amid the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, as the guilds continue to seek fair contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
The 18 crew members who work in-house at Walt Disney Studios who were eligible voters seek fair compensation for all hours worked, adequate health care and retirement benefits. The unionizing VFX workers are responsible for creating the special effects across the studio’s catalog, which includes “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” “The Lion King” and more, are also seeking the same rights and protections afforded to their unionized coworkers who are already represented by IATSE. […] With the workers behind the vote, the union’s next step is to engage in collective bargaining negotiations with Disney execs to draft a contract that addresses the workers’ needs. Negotiation dates have yet to be set.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Disney VFX Workers Vote Unanimously To Unionize
On October 3, I asked my editor what day it was. “It’s October 3,” he replied. October 3 has been crowned “Mean Girls Day” in reference to a scene in the hit 2004 teen comedy. To celebrate, Paramount has made the decision to upload the entire movie to TikTok in 23 parts, in a classic “how do you do fellow kids?”…
Source: Gizmodo – Dear Paramount: Stop Trying to Make TikTok Movies Happen, They’re Not Going to Happen
Western Digital’s WD_Black SN850P was the first officially PlayStation 5-licensed SSD to hit the market. Seagate wants a piece of that and has hopped on the PlayStation 5 train with the new Game Drive PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD series, officially licensed for Sony’s current-generation gaming console.
Unlike Microsoft, which uses a proprietary SSD expansion card for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, Sony opted to employ a standard M.2 slot for storage expansion on the PlayStation 5. The Japanese console maker’s decision provides more storage options for gamers since they have many M.2 SSD offerings on the market. The M.2 slot has also paved the way for SSD manufacturers to partner with Sony to release licensed drives, which have been tested and approved for the PlayStation 5. Therefore, you don’t want to worry whether the SSD’s heatsink keeps the drive cool or if the Game Drive will fit inside the PlayStation 5.
Seagate’s Game Drive SSDs, like the WD_Black SN850P, stick to the PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. That’s the same interface in the PlayStation 5, so it makes little sense for vendors to tailor faster toward the gaming console. The Game Drive SSDs utilize Phison’s PS5018-E18 PCIe 4.0 SSD controller capable of hitting write and read speeds over 7 GB/s. Built with TSMC’s 12nm process node, the E18 is a popular, high-end SSD controller for mainstream PCIe 4.0 SSDs. The E18 comes equipped with three 32-bit Arm Cortex R5 CPU cores and an eight-channel design to support NAND flash speeds up to 1,600 MT/s and capacities up to 8 TB. Seagate pairs the E18 controller with unspecified 3D TLC NAND in the company’s Game Drive SSDs.
| Seagate Game Drive Specifications | |||
| 1 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB | |
| Part Number | ZP1000GP304001 | ZP2000GP304001 | ZP4000GP304001 |
| Seq Reads (MB/s) | 7,300 | 7,300 | 7,250 |
| Seq Writes (MB/s) | 6,000 | 6,900 | 6,900 |
| Random Reads (K IOPS) | 800 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Random Writes (K IOPS) | 1,000 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Endurance (TBW) | 1,275 | 2,550 | 5,100 |
| Active Power, Average (W) | 6.3 | 7.8 | 8.6 |
| Idle Power PS3, Average (mW) | 20 | 25 | 30 |
| Low Power L1.2 mode (mW) | <5 | <5 | <5 |
Seagate offers the Game Drive SSDs in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB variants. Sony recently deployed a software update for the PlayStation 5 to support 8 TB SSDs. It’s a shame that Seagate doesn’t commercialize an 8 TB variant of the Game Drive SSDs as competing brands, including Corsair, Sabrent, PNY, Addlink, and Inland, all have 8 TB drives in their arsenals.
Seagate’s Game Drive series delivers sequential read and write speeds up to 7,300 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s, respectively. Random performance scales up to 1,000,000 IOPS writes and reads. However, the sequential and random performance vary by capacity. The 2 TB model is the only SKU to hit the maximum quoted figures. The Game Drive series’ sequential read performance is on par with the WD_Black SN850P. Sequential write performance is somewhat faster. However, the WD_Black SN850P flaunts better random performance than the Game Drive.
Endurance doubles by the capacity. The 1 TB is rated for 1,275 TBW (terabytes written), while the 2 TB and 4 TB drives are at 2,550 TBW and 5,100 TBW. That’s one aspect where the Game Drive is substantially better than the WD_Black SN850P. For comparison, the WD_Black SN850P’s endurance levels for the 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB drives are 600 TBW, 1,200 TBW, and 2,400 TBW, respectively. Seagate’s SSDs are over 2X more durable than the Western Digital drives.
The Game Drive 1 TB and 2 TB models are shipping now and have $99.99 and $159.99 MSRPs, respectively. However, they’re selling for $104 and $174 on Amazon. Meanwhile, the Game Drive 4 TB will set you back $449. The 1 TB and 2 TB drives are $10 cheaper than the WD_Black SN850P. The WD_Black SN850P 4 TB is up to $70 less expensive. Due to the licensing fees, Seagate’s Game Drive series is significantly more costly than the non-licensed SSDs. For comparison, the WD_Black SN850X, which is commonly regarded as one of the best SSDs for the PlayStation 5, is available at $69 for the 1 TB model, $129 for the 2 TB model, and $282 for the 4 TB model.
Source: AnandTech – Seagate Releases Game Drive PCIe 4.0 SSDs for PlayStation 5
If you’ve been looking for a new laptop capable of playing games and handling your day-to-day business, you might want to take advantage of the latest deal from Dell, only available for a limited time. It gets you a Dell Inspiron 16 with a 13th Gen Intel i7-1360P and an Nvidia RTX 2050 for $929.99, $320 off the retail…
Source: LifeHacker – This i7 Dell Inspiron 16 Laptop Is 0 Off Right Now
Enlarge / In addition to craters, Mercury’s terrain features faults generated by the planet’s cooling. (credit: NASA)
The planet Mercury may be hot, but it appears to be cooling down. That’s the conclusion of a new study that looked for the kinds of features on Mercury that can form as the surfaces of planets contract due to cooling. These vertical faults, called “graben,” are not only common across the planet’s surface but appear to have formed within the last few hundred million years—and possibly much more recently.
All of which suggests that the stresses caused by a cooling planet are still playing out on the Solar System’s smallest non-dwarf planet.
The process of building a planet necessarily generates a lot of heat as impactors of various sizes deliver both matter and energy to the growing planet. The radioactive elements they deliver can also heat the planet’s interior. For the rocky planets of our Solar System, this heat means a differentiated interior, with layers of lighter rocks on top of a liquid core.
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Source: Ars Technica – Mercury is still shrinking as it cools
For the past decade, the semiconductor industry has been experiencing the effects of Moore’s Law running out of road. It’s getting harder and harder (or perhaps even impossible) for fabs to deliver new process nodes that deliver both performance and cost improvements. But NVIDIA and its ambitious CEO Jensen Huang have seemingly accepted the
Source: Hot Hardware – You’ve Heard Of Moore’s Law For CPUs, Now Check Out NVIDIA’s Huang’s Law For GPUs
The SteamOS Linux
distribution is focused on gaming, naturally, but the effort to build it
has resulted
in contributions to multiple areas in the Linux ecosystem. Alberto Garcia
has been working on SteamOS and came to Bilbao, Spain to describe some of those
contributions at Open Source Summit Europe 2023. There are some obvious
areas where a gaming-focused OS might contribute upstream, such as
graphics, but the talk showed contributions in several other areas as well.
Source: LWN.net – [$] Linux ecosystem contributions from SteamOS
Netflix is one of the main production companies targeted by the ongoing actors’ strike, and that negative attention may be impacting the company’s plans to raise prices. One report suggests that the company is waiting until the spotlight is off its business practices so it can push prices on its cheapest, ad-based…
Source: Gizmodo – Netflix Reportedly Plans Another Price Hike When This Strike Business Is Over
In this Converseen update, the PDF conversion tool has received a significant upgrade, and it is now possible to drag and drop entire folders in order to import images for processing.
Source: LXer – Converseen Image Converter for Linux now with Enhanced PDF Converter and Folder Importer
A dose of pomegranate in your dog’s water bowl might just help keep their teeth and gums healthy, new research suggests. The randomized, controlled study found that dogs given an over-the-counter water additive made with pomegranate extract experienced less plaque and tartar on their teeth over a month’s time. The…
Source: Gizmodo – Pomegranate-Based Water Drops for Dogs Can Help Prevent Doggie Gingivitis
By now, Live Photos are an iPhone staple. And not only can you relive a little of the action occurring in your still photo, you can also turn Live Photos into Boomerangs for Instagram, or even looping GIFs and long-exposure shots. But there’s one more thing you can do with Live Photos you might not know about—convert…
Source: LifeHacker – The Fastest Way to Turn iPhone Live Photos Into a Video
Enlarge / A cropped portion of the AI-generated version of Hanks that the actor shared on his Instagram feed. (credit: Tom Hanks)
News of AI deepfakes spread quickly when you’re Tom Hanks. On Sunday, the actor posted a warning on Instagram about an unauthorized AI-generated version of himself being used to sell a dental plan. Hanks’ warning spread in the media, including The New York Times. The next day, CBS anchor Gayle King warned of a similar scheme using her likeness to sell a weight-loss product. The now widely reported incidents have raised new concerns about the use of AI in digital media.
“BEWARE!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it,” wrote Hanks on his Instagram feed. Similarly, King shared an AI-augmented video with the words “Fake Video” stamped across it, stating, “I’ve never heard of this product or used it! Please don’t be fooled by these AI videos.”
Also on Monday, YouTube celebrity MrBeast posted on social media network X about a similar scam that features a modified video of him with manipulated speech and lip movements promoting a fraudulent iPhone 15 giveaway. “Lots of people are getting this deepfake scam ad of me,” he wrote. “Are social media platforms ready to handle the rise of AI deepfakes? This is a serious problem.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Tom Hanks warns of AI-generated doppelganger in Instagram plea
