Source: Kotaku – The Week In Games: What’s Coming Out Beyond Alan Wake 2
Monthly Archives: October 2023
SpaceX will launch ESA navigation satellites amid delays with the EU's own rockets
SpaceX has struck a deal with the European Space Agency (ESA) to launch four of Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket, The Wall Street Journal has reported. It’ll be the first time Elon Musk’s company has launched any EU satellites containing classified equipment.
The ESA had planned to launch Galileo satellites using its homegrown Ariane 6 rocket, but the latter has seen frequent delays and isn’t expected to make its inaugural launch until 2024 at the earliest. The deal is still subject to final approval by the EU Commission and member states, according to ESA director of navigation Javier Benedicto.
SpaceX would launch the satellites from US territory, according to the terms of the deal. It would mark the first time Galileo equipment has been carried into orbit outside of European territory, barring early test versions launched from Kazakhstan. All other Galileo satellites have launched from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana — using Soyuz rockets at first and the Ariane 5 system later on.
News of the deal isn’t a big surprise, as it was reported this summer that Europe was seeking to cut a deal with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to “exceptionally launch Galileo satellites.” Another alternative would have been Russian-built Soyuz rockets, but that was off the table due to EU sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Ariane 6 was originally slated to launch in 2023, but multiple delays have pushed the first launch back to 2024. Recently, a short hotfire of the Vulcain 2.1 engine was delayed, and a long-duration static-fire test was pushed back from early October to late November. The Ariane 5 rocket is no longer an option, as it was retired after its final launch in July.
SpaceX’s launched Europe’s Euclid telescope in July, and is slated to launch two other EU spacecraft in the near future. As it stands, the ESA only plans to make four Galileo launches using the Falcon 9. Musk himself has had a tenuous relationship with the EU — most recently, a top European Union official is warned him about the spread of misinformation on his social network platform X amid the Israel-Hamas war.
The Galileo system is key for Europe, as it makes it independent from the US Global Positioning System (GPS) and satnav systems from Russia and China. It’s also used by EU military and security services to transmit encrypted messages. The service went live in 2016, but additional satellites are required to bolster the existing network. “It is a matter of robustness,” said Benedicto. “We have 10 satellites that are ready to be launched, and those satellites should be in space, not on the ground.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spacex-will-launch-esa-navigation-satellites-amid-delays-with-the-eus-own-rockets-140030424.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – SpaceX will launch ESA navigation satellites amid delays with the EU’s own rockets
Eureka: With GPT-4 overseeing training, robots can learn much faster
Enlarge / In this still captured from a video provided by Nvidia, a simulated robot hand learns pen tricks, trained by Eureka, using simultaneous trials. (credit: Nvidia)
On Friday, researchers from Nvidia, UPenn, Caltech, and the University of Texas at Austin announced Eureka, an algorithm that uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model for designing training goals (called “reward functions”) to enhance robot dexterity. The work aims to bridge the gap between high-level reasoning and low-level motor control, allowing robots to learn complex tasks rapidly using massively parallel simulations that run through trials simultaneously. According to the team, Eureka outperforms human-written reward functions by a substantial margin.
Before robots can interact with the real world successfully, they need to learn how to move their robot bodies to achieve goals—like picking up objects or moving. Instead of making a physical robot try and fail one task at a time to learn in a lab, researchers at Nvidia have been experimenting with using video game-like computer worlds (thanks to platforms called Isaac Sim and Isaac Gym) that simulate three-dimensional physics. These allow for massively parallel training sessions to take place in many virtual worlds at once, dramatically speeding up training time.
“Leveraging state-of-the-art GPU-accelerated simulation in Nvidia Isaac Gym,” writes Nvidia on its demonstration page, “Eureka is able to quickly evaluate the quality of a large batch of reward candidates, enabling scalable search in the reward function space.” They call it “rapid reward evaluation via massively parallel reinforcement learning.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Eureka: With GPT-4 overseeing training, robots can learn much faster
How to Prepare for the Dentist if You Haven't Been in Forever
Despite the time-honored wisdom that we should visit a dentist for a checkup and cleaning every six months, many of us just … don’t. According to the CDC, around 35% of Americans have not visited the dentist in the last year. If it’s been a long while for you, and you’re planning to get back in the dentist chair,…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Prepare for the Dentist if You Haven’t Been in Forever
Apple's October Surprise Might Be a New iMac or MacBook Pro
October is almost over, but by the time spooky season is done, Apple may have a jump scare planned for all those with their finger on the tech pulse. The company is reportedly gearing up for some sort of product launch soon enough, this time dropping new versions of the MacBook Pro and iMac
Source: Gizmodo – Apple’s October Surprise Might Be a New iMac or MacBook Pro
Why Blizzard Is Giving Away A Liquid-Cooled Diablo IV Gaming PC With Real Human Blood
Back in the old days, it wasn’t uncommon to bestow a drop of blood (or more) inside a gaming PC as a sort of accidental sacrifice—many of those beige towers from yesteryear had sharp edges on their metal panels and it was easy to gash your finger. Fast forward a few decades and Blizzard is giving away a Diablo IV-themed gaming PC that’s intentionally
Source: Hot Hardware – Why Blizzard Is Giving Away A Liquid-Cooled Diablo IV Gaming PC With Real Human Blood
Virgin Galactic Teams Up with NASA Pluto Scientist for Edge-of-Space Exploration
A crew of researchers is preparing to conduct experiments approximately 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface while on board Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane.
Source: Gizmodo – Virgin Galactic Teams Up with NASA Pluto Scientist for Edge-of-Space Exploration
[$] Hyphens, minus, and dashes in Debian man pages
It is probably fair to say that most Linux users spend little time thinking
about the troff typesetting program, despite that application’s
groundbreaking role in computing history. Troff (along with nroff) is
still with us, though, even if they are called groff these days, and every
now and then they make their presence known. A recent groff change created
a bit of a tempest within the Debian community, and has effectively been
reverted there. It all comes down to the question of what, exactly, is the
character used to mark command-line options on Unix systems?
Source: LWN.net – [$] Hyphens, minus, and dashes in Debian man pages
PeaZip 9.5 File Archiver Brings UI & Performance Improvements
The latest PeaZip 9.5 archiver unveils heightened performance, a faster mode for archive browsing, and polished file manager functionalities.
The post PeaZip 9.5 File Archiver Brings UI & Performance Improvements appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – PeaZip 9.5 File Archiver Brings UI & Performance Improvements
Mind-Control Gaming Isn’t Sci-Fi, It’s Just Science
This story is part of our new Future of Gaming series, a three-site look at gaming’s most pioneering technologies, players, and makers.
Source: Kotaku – Mind-Control Gaming Isn’t Sci-Fi, It’s Just Science
You Can Get This Beginner's Cybersecurity Course for $60 Right Now
You can learn the basics of cybersecurity with this comprehensive 408-hour, 26-course overview that is on sale for $59.97 right now (reg. $754) through October 23. It covers everything from Python to penetration testing and ethical hacking.
Source: LifeHacker – You Can Get This Beginner’s Cybersecurity Course for Right Now
LLVM Looking To Better Collaborate Around Common AI/GPU/FPGA Offloading
While most hardware vendors are relying on LLVM when it comes to offloading compute work to GPUs, AI accelerators, FPGAs, and similar heterogeneous compute environments, right now each vendor is basically creating their own LLVM offloading run-time among a lot of other duplicated — and often downstream only — code. The new “llvm/offload” project hopes to lead to better collaboration in this area…
Source: Phoronix – LLVM Looking To Better Collaborate Around Common AI/GPU/FPGA Offloading
The Best Vegan Mashed Potatoes Start With Yukon Golds
There is only one Thanksgiving dish that cannot be made vegan: the turkey. The rest are surprisingly easy to modify, and mashed potatoes are the easiest. Non-vegans are always reticent to sacrifice dairy, but if you choose the right spud for your mash (and grab one of those fancy new margarines), you’ll find you don’t…
Source: LifeHacker – The Best Vegan Mashed Potatoes Start With Yukon Golds
Intel Vulkan Driver Lands Optimization To Help GravityMark, Other Demanding Software
Following an FCV optimization for the latest Intel graphics hardware, ASTC LDR emulation, some still-pending Vulkan sparse support for ANV atop the existing i915 driver, and other recent Intel open-source “ANV” Vulkan driver optimizations, another optimization was just merged into Mesa 23.3…
Source: Phoronix – Intel Vulkan Driver Lands Optimization To Help GravityMark, Other Demanding Software
The Daily Telescope: A look at a young star cluster in a nearby galaxy
Enlarge / A new infrared image of NGC 346 from the Mid-Infrared Instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. (credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Nolan Habel (NASA-JPL))
Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light; a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.
Good morning. It is October 23, and today’s image features a new view of a star cluster within the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the nearest galaxies to Earth. This galaxy has an estimated 3 billion stars, which sounds like a lot. However it is tiny compared to the nearest galaxy that is of a similar size to our own Milky Way. That would be the Andromeda Galaxy, which has an estimated 1 trillion stars. That’s … a lot.
Anyway, one of the neatest features in the Small Magellanic Cloud is a particularly bright cluster of stars known as NGC 346, discovered about 200 years ago by a Scottish astronomer. Some of these stars may be as young as 2 million years old.
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Source: Ars Technica – The Daily Telescope: A look at a young star cluster in a nearby galaxy
Five Fixes for Leaky Gutters That You Can DIY
Problems with your gutters can be frustrating: Loud drips, water collecting in places it shouldn’t, and water taking an unplanned path, which can cause damage and make rainstorms more trouble than they need to be. While some issues with your gutters require professional help, others can be solved simply yourself with…
Source: LifeHacker – Five Fixes for Leaky Gutters That You Can DIY
Masks Work. So What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?
A Harvard professor on the history of science looks at our response to the pandemic, criticizing “a report that gave the false impression that masking didn’t help.” From Scientific American:
The group’s report was published by Cochrane, an organization that collects databases and periodically issues “systematic” reviews of scientific evidence relevant to health care. This year it published a paper addressing the efficacy of physical interventions to slow the spread of respiratory illness such as COVID… The review of studies of masking concluded that the “results were inconclusive…” [and] it was “uncertain whether wearing [surgical] masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses.” Still, the authors were also uncertain about that uncertainty, stating that their confidence in their conclusion was “low to moderate.” You can see why the average person could be confused… The Cochrane finding was not that masking didn’t work but that scientists lacked sufficient evidence of sufficient quality to conclude that they worked…
Cochrane has made this mistake before. In 2016 a flurry of media reports declared that flossing your teeth was a waste of time… The answer demonstrates a third issue with the Cochrane approach: how it defines evidence. The organization states that its reviews “identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria.” The problem is what those eligibility criteria are. Cochrane Reviews base their findings on randomized controlled trials (RCTs), often called the “gold standard” of scientific evidence. But many questions can’t be answered well with RCTs, and some can’t be answered at all…
In fact, there is strong evidence that masks do work to prevent the spread of respiratory illness. It just doesn’t come from RCTs. It comes from Kansas. In July 2020 the governor of Kansas issued an executive order requiring masks in public places. Just a few weeks earlier, however, the legislature had passed a bill authorizing counties to opt out of any statewide provision. In the months that followed, COVID rates decreased in all 24 counties with mask mandates and continued to increase in 81 other counties that opted out of them… Cochrane ignored this epidemiological evidence because it didn’t meet its rigid standard.
I have called this approach “methodological fetishism,” when scientists fixate on a preferred methodology and dismiss studies that don’t follow it. Sadly, it’s not unique to Cochrane. By dogmatically insisting on a particular definition of rigor, scientists in the past have landed on wrong answers more than once.
Vox also points out that while Cochrane’s review included 78 studies, “only six were actually conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic… Instead, most of them looked at flu transmission in normal conditions, and many of them were about other interventions like hand-washing.
“Only two of the studies are about Covid and masking in particular. Furthermore, neither of those studies looked directly at whether people wear masks, but instead at whether people were encouraged or told to wear masks by researchers.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Masks Work. So What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?
The Morning After: North Korean workers got remote IT jobs to help finance weapons programs
The United States Justice Department says North Korean nationals have been working remotely for US companies, using fake IDs. The money they make is apparently being funneled to fund weapons of mass destruction programs. At a news conference in St. Louis, Missouri, the FBI alleged that thousands of individuals have moved to countries such as Russia and China and posed as freelance IT workers living in the US.
They used false information for emails, payment platforms and websites — sometimes even paying Americans to use their Wi-Fi and setting up proxy computers from those connections. The money being made here was substantial, too. The FBI has apparently collected around $1.5 million in money earned by these workers during previously sealed seizures in October 2022 and January 2023.
– Mat Smith
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Engadget Podcast: Breaking down Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto”
Also, we discuss why Spider-Man 2 on the PS5 is a worthy sequel.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has wrapped up his pro-tech worldview in a massive tome, the Techno-Optimist Manifesto. Andreessen claims, “technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential,” and he goes on to vilify anyone who dares to step in the way of “progress.” To break down this document, we’re joined by tech critic Paris Marx. We also dive into Spider-Man 2 on PS5.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder review
The joy of pure imagination.
Nintendo
So Mario has always consumed mushrooms, but in the latest Mario game on Nintendo Switch, it seriously feels like the plumber (and his friends) are dabbling in hallucinogens. This has opened the creative floodgates for level design and gameplay dynamics, twisting the usual 2D platform game in weird and wonderful ways. The game also marks the first Mario title with a new voice actor for the protagonist.
Jon Stewart’s Apple TV+ show reportedly ends following clash over AI and China
The show was abruptly canceled.
The Problem With Jon Stewart isn’t returning for a third season at Apple TV+. It was supposed to begin filming for another eight episodes within the next couple of weeks, but Apple and Stewart reportedly decided to part ways before it could start. According to The New York Times, the publications said the parties didn’t see eye to eye, with Stewart apparently telling production staff that Apple executives had raised concerns about certain subjects they planned to cover, particularly China and artificial intelligence. Neither party has issued a statement.
Blizzard plans to raffle off a human-blood-infused PC
Diablo IV players have to donate to make it happen.
Blizzard
To celebrate the release of Diablo IV’s new season, Season of Blood, Blizzard has launched a month-long blood drive in the US that’ll unlock in-game rewards. Once donations reach 666 quarts altogether, players will be able to enter sweepstakes for “a custom liquid-cooled PC infused with real human blood.” A typical blood donation is 1 pint, so it’ll take a little over 1,300 donations to hit the final goal. Get giving, you creeps.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-north-korean-workers-got-remote-it-jobs-to-help-finance-weapons-programs-111516316.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The Morning After: North Korean workers got remote IT jobs to help finance weapons programs
Acer Helios 18 Review: A Massive Gaming Laptop That’s Almost Top of the Line
This is the third 18-inch gaming laptop I’ve reviewed in 2023 (although the first for Gizmodo). It’s a trend that’s hopefully going to stick around well into the future, as having access to an almost desktop-monitor-size screen, plus top gaming components, is exactly what laptop gamers need right now.
Source: Gizmodo – Acer Helios 18 Review: A Massive Gaming Laptop That’s Almost Top of the Line
Etnaviv NPU Support Coming Together, Mesa Upstreaming Next
The Etnaviv Gallium3D driver within Mesa has long been focused on reverse engineering and supporting Vivante graphics IP found in various SoCs. That driver has worked out well for open-source OpenGL support for Vivante graphics while more recently Etnaviv has begun tackling Vivante neural processing unit (NPU) support that is beginning to be found in various SoCs…
Source: Phoronix – Etnaviv NPU Support Coming Together, Mesa Upstreaming Next