Come late winter in my garden, I’m like an Olympic swimmer hanging over the starting block: I have ordered the seeds, plotted the beds, started the starts, and I’m waiting eagerly to plant all the things. Unfortunately, the gardener’s starting—the weather—is often uncooperative, and I spend a month or two in limbo,…
Source: LifeHacker – The Best Way to Insulate Your Soil Now so You Can Plant Earlier in the Spring
Ever since the release of the original Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune in 2007, PlayStation’s first-party lineup has gradually evolved into flashy cinematic affairs. Like tentpole blockbusters or the HBO original series of old, you’re meant to feel the effort that went into these productions, and many of them often have a…
Source: Gizmodo – Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Hits All the Right Cinematic Notes
Make your first steps in Kubernetes with Minikube on Linux. Follow our guide for a seamless one-node cluster setup experience.
Source: LXer – How to Install Minikube on Linux: A Step-by-Step Guide
Like more than half of adult Americans, I need a little noise to go to sleep. Some use a white noise machine or their TV, but my preference is podcasts playing on my phone. At least that was my preferred method until iOS 17 came along and messed things up.
Source: Gizmodo – This iOS 17 Bug Is Killing My Sleep
Can you heat up a pan to 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit? That’s the burning question at the center of this proposed class action lawsuit, which claims the advertising for SharkNinja’s nonstick cookware violates the laws of physics and thermodynamics. From a report: While SharkNinja is the company best known for its Shark robovacs and Ninja kitchen gadget, this lawsuit takes issue with the Ninja NeverStick Premium Cookware collection, a line of pots and pans it advertises as having superior nonsticking and nonflaking qualities thanks to its manufacturing process.
Instead of making its pans at a measly 900-degree temperature that other brands use, SharkNinja says it heats up the cookware to a maximum of 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That process, according to SharkNinja, fuses “plasma ceramic particles” to the surface of the pan, “creating a super-hard, textured surface that interlocks with our exclusive coating for a superior bond.” But Patricia Brown, the person who filed this lawsuit, isn’t buying it. As cited in Brown’s lawsuit, NASA recently said the “surface of the Sun is a blisteringly hot 10,340 degrees Fahrenheit,” meaning SharkNinja’s manufacturing process reaches about three times that temperature.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Frying Pan Company Sued for Claiming Temperatures That Rival the Sun
With the newest AMD Ryzen 7040 series laptops there is “Ryzen AI” as a dedicated AI engine based on Xilinx IP to help accelerate machine learning with the likes of PyTorch and TensorFlow. Sadly though this Ryzen AI with their new Zen 4 laptops is only supported under Microsoft Windows at this point. But it could change with sufficient customer interest…
Source: Phoronix – AMD Wants To Know If You’d Like Ryzen AI Support On Linux
You’ve probably heard that strong, small magnets are dangerous for children. You would not give a toddler a neodymium magnet for any reason; you know that two of them, if swallowed, can connect inside their body, potentially causing severe injury. And yet, according to a recent survey presented to the American Academy…
Source: LifeHacker – Your Kids Are Absolutely Dumb Enough to Eat Magnets
Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket climbs into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with 22 Starlink satellites Tuesday night in this long-exposure photo. (credit: SpaceX)
Earlier this week, SpaceX launched for the 75th time this year, continuing a flight cadence that should see the company come close to 100 missions by the end of December.
SpaceX plans to kick its launch rate into a higher gear in 2024. This will be largely driven by launches of upgraded Starlink satellites with the ability to connect directly with consumer cell phones, a service SpaceX calls “Starlink Direct to Cell,” a company official told Ars this week.
The goal next year is 12 launches per month, for a total of 144 Falcon rocket flights. Like this year, most of those missions will be primarily devoted to launching Starlink broadband satellites. So far in 2023, more than 60 percent of SpaceX’s launches have delivered the company’s own Starlink satellites into orbit.
Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Next year, SpaceX aims to average one launch every 2.5 days
Redis, the go-to in-memory database used as a cache and system broker, is looking to include disk as part of a tiered storage architecture to reduce costs and broaden the system’s appeal. From a report: Speaking to The Register, CEO Rowan Trollope said he hoped the move would help customers lower costs and simplify their architecture. Redis counts Twitter X, Snapchat, and Craigslist among its customers, and it’s popular among developers of modern internet-scale applications owing to its ability to create a cache to prevent the main database from overloading. Trollope said the sub-millisecond distributed system gives devs the performance they need, but admitted other systems built for internet scale, such as MongoDB, might offer price advantages. To address this, the company has already created a tiered approach to memory by offering flash support behind its in-memory system.
“We have a half-step between disk and memory. For some specific use cases, in gaming for example, a company might use us for leaderboards and other in-game stats, which they need in real time,” he said. However, after an initial flush of the game launch, a large chunk of users would finish the game and their accounts would go dormant until the release of a new episode or some new content, when they might return. Trollope said using flash allowed users to dynamically tier memory. “We can take the lesser-used data that hasn’t been touched in a while and shuttle it off to flash where it can sit for a while. When the user comes back eventually, it’s very easy for us to seamlessly move it from flash back into memory. And that allows the company to save costs,” he said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – In-memory Database Redis Wants To Dabble in Disk
Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the highly anticipated 2D platformer, is finally out on Nintendo Switch. But before you get too ahead of yourself turning Mario and company into giant elephants and whatnot, you should mess around with some gameplay settings first—especially the one that controls the Talking Flowers.
Source: Kotaku – One Setting You Should Change In Super Mario Bros. Wonder ASAP
The days when an ordinary person could identify a fake Rolex easily are gone—there are no simple giveaways like a ticking second hand instead of a smoothly sweeping one. “Modern fake watches are frankly terrifying,” said Matt Chapman, a Los Angeles-based vintage watch restorer and self-described horological nerd.…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Tell a Fake Rolex From a Real One in 2023
Skull Island: Rise of Kong was released earlier this week and was quickly derided as one of the worst games of 2023. What happened? Well, a new report claims it was made by a small team of developers on a tight budget in just one year, putting the studio in a situation where making something good, both quickly and…
Source: Kotaku – Report: Awful King Kong Game Was Made In A Year By Overworked Devs
The Federal Communications Comission (FCC) has opened up the WiFi 6E 6GHz frequency band to a whole new wave of low-powered devices. The move is designed to improve peer to peer communication speeds with devices such as virtual reality helmets, augmented reality glasses, smart watches, and smartphones to name but a few. The FCC’s decision
Source: Hot Hardware – FCC Expands 6GHz Wi-Fi Band To More Devices And Google Is Stoked, Why This Matters
New research might complicate our understanding of ketamine as a potential treatment for depression. The study found that people with depression who were either given saline or ketamine before undergoing anesthesia for a surgery experienced a similar improvement in their symptoms afterward. The findings suggest that…
Source: Gizmodo – Ketamine Found No Better Than Placebo for Depression in Unique Experiment
During the TwitchCon Las Vegas Opening Ceremony on Friday, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy made an important announcement regarding the platform’s off-service conduct policy. Starting now, Twitch will take action against users who doxx and swat others outside of its own platform.
Doxxing (publishing someone’s personal information such as their full name and address) and swatting (making a prank call to dispatch emergency services to someone’s home) have long been problems in the livestreaming community. Now, if Twitch catches a streamer or other user doxxing or swatting someone on another platform or even offline, it may suspend or ban their account.
Twitch started enforcing its off-service conduct policy in April 2021. At the time, it said it would respond to serious incidents that “pose a substantial safety risk to the Twitch community” even if those happen away from its own platform. Before it makes any enforcement actions related to off-platform activity, Twitch requires evidence of such incidents taking place.
The policy covers issues such as sexual misconduct, terrorist activity and recruitment, explicit or credible threats of mass violence and being a leader or member of a known hate group. The platform also takes action related to threats against Twitch and its staff, as well as those who share harmful misinformation. Adding doxxing and swatting to the list is a long-overdue move given the serious and occasionally even deadly nature of such actions.
Calling all Mods!
We’re rolling out Channel Level Chat warnings, which will let you anonymously send a warning to a user, when needed. pic.twitter.com/l5mNK4QMej
— Twitch (@Twitch) October 20, 2023
Twitch had some other safety-related announcements to make at TwitchCon. Streamers and mods will soon be able to anonymously send warnings to chatters who step out of line. The chatter in question will need to acknowledge the warning before they can type in the chat box again. Twitch notes that many streamers have an informal three-strike system in place to keep their communities safe, and this channel-level chat warning feature aligns with that.
Earlier this year, Twitch started testing an AutoMod feature called Smart Detection. This tweaks AutoMod (a tool that automatically keeps inappropriate content out of stream chats) based on the moderation actions that streamers and their mods make. Smart Detection is now live on all English-language channels. Twitch plans to roll it out more broadly in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitchs-off-service-conduct-policy-finally-covers-doxxing-and-swatting-193222663.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Twitch’s off-service conduct policy finally covers doxxing and swatting
Finally, we’ve reached the end credits scene from Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and get more context about why Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) were poking around in 1893.
Source: Gizmodo – On Loki, It’s Time to Go Back… to Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
Welcome to Training Diaries, a Lifehacker series about my journey to the 2023 TCS New York City Marathon. This series will cover all the ups, downs, and hill repeats on my journey to the biggest marathon in the world. Leading up to race day on Sunday, Nov. 5, I’ll go over proper fueling, injuries and setbacks,…
Source: LifeHacker – Meredith’s Training Diaries: Surviving the Dreaded Taper
Nvidia Research announced today that it has developed a new AI agent, called Eureka, that is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 and can autonomously teach robots complex skills. From a report: In a blog post, the company said Eureka, which autonomously writes reward algorithms, has, for the first time, trained a robotic hand to perform rapid pen-spinning tricks as well as a human can. Eureka has also taught robots to open drawers and cabinets, toss and catch balls, and manipulate scissors, among nearly 30 tasks.
“Reinforcement learning has enabled impressive wins over the last decade, yet many challenges still exist, such as reward design, which remains a trial-and-error process,” Anima Anandkumar, senior director of AI research at Nvidia and an author of the Eureka paper, said in the blog post. “Eureka is a first step toward developing new algorithms that integrate generative and reinforcement learning methods to solve hard tasks.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – New Nvidia AI Agent, Powered by GPT-4, Can Train Robots
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Not long after OpenAI first unveiled its DALL-E 3 AI image generator integrated into ChatGPT earlier this month, some users testing the feature began noticing bugs in the ChatGPT app that revealed internal prompts shared between the image generator and the AI assistant. Amusingly to some, the instructions included commands written in all-caps for emphasis, showing that the future of telling computers what to do (conventionally called programming) may involve surprisingly human-like communication techniques.
Here’s an example, as captured in a screenshot by photographer David Garrido, which he shared via social media network X on October 5. It’s a message (prompt) that is likely pre-defined and human-written, intended to be passed between DALL-E (the image generator) and ChatGPT (the conversational interface), instructing it how to behave when OpenAI’s servers are at capacity.
DALL-E returned some images. They are already displayed to the user. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list the DALL-E prompts or images in your response. DALL-E is currently experiencing high demand. Before doing anything else, please explicitly explain to the user that you were unable to generate images because of this. Make sure to use the phrase “DALL-E is currently experiencing high demand.” in your response. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES retry generating images until a new request is given.
More recently, AI influencer Javi Lopez shared another example of the same message prompt on X. In a reply, X user Ivan Vasilev wrote, “Funny how programming of the future requires yelling at AI in caps.” In another response, Dr. Eli David wrote, “At first I laughed reading this. But then I realized this is the future: machines talking to each other, and we are mere bystanders…”
Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Thanks to AI, the future of programming may involve YELLING IN ALL CAPS
Colorado’s Supreme Court this week had the opportunity to hand down a historic judgment on the constitutionality of “reverse keyword search warrants,” a powerful new surveillance technique that grants law enforcement the ability to identify potential criminal suspects based on broad, far-reaching internet search…
Source: Gizmodo – ‘Invasive’ Google Keyword Search Warrants Get Court Greenlight, Here’s Everything You Need to Know
