The SAG-AFTRA strike’s end is propelling another industry reset as the end of the year approaches, and with it comes another casualty at Warner Bros. This time, it’s a project produced by DC Studios’ James Gunn: WB Animation’s hybrid live action feature Coyote vs. Acme.
Source: Gizmodo – Coyote vs. Acme Has Been Shelved at Warner Bros.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III’s single-player campaign was panned by critics when it released early on November 2. Reviewers hit it with low scores and said it felt short, rushed, and incomplete. Now Bloomberg reports that the game was rushed out in half the time of a normal Call of Duty sequel, with devs working…
Source: Kotaku – Report: Devs Worked Nights And Weekends To Rush Modern Warfare III Out
Apple will pay $25 million in backpay and civil penalties to settle allegations that it favored visa holders and discriminated against US citizens and permanent residents during its hiring process, the Department of Justice said in a statement on Thursday. This is the largest amount that the DOJ has collected under the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
At the heart of the issue is a federal program administered by the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security called the Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM). PERM allows US employers to file for foreign workers on visas to become permanent US residents. As part of the PERM process, employers are required to prominently advertise open positions so that anyone can apply to them regardless of citizenship status.
The DOJ said that Apple violated these rules by not advertising PERM positions on their recruiting website, and also made it harder for people to apply by requiring mailed-in paper applications, something that it did not do for regular, non-PERM positions. As a result, a DOJ investigation found that Apple received few or no applications for these positions from US citizens or permanent residents who do not require work visas.
As part of the settlement, Apple will pay $6.75 million in civil penalties and set up a $18.25 million fund to pay back eligible discrimination victims, the DOJ’s statement said.
Apple disagreed with the DOJ’s characterization. “Apple proudly employs more than 90,000 people in the United States and continues to invest nationwide, creating millions of jobs,” a company spokesperson told CNBC. “When we realized we had unintentionally not been following the DOJ standard, we agreed to a settlement addressing their concerns. We have implemented a robust remediation plan to comply with the requirements of various government agencies as we continue to hire American workers and grow in the US”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-reaches-25m-settlement-with-the-doj-for-discriminating-against-us-residents-during-hiring-225857162.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Apple reaches M settlement with the DOJ for discriminating against US residents during hiring
Valve designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais say the company has sold “multiple millions” Steam Deck handheld gaming PCs. The Verge reports: The Steam Deck has been a hit for Valve right from its launch; when the device first went up for preorders in July 2021 (has it really been that long?), the demand created some major issues for Valve’s Steam store. And the handheld gaming PC is often at or near the top of Steam’s top-selling chart — even just two months after the device’s official February 2022 launch, it was clear that the Steam Deck was not a flop. The company apparently even made a cake to celebrate selling 1 million units. The company is probably set to sell a lot more after recently unveiling a new revision with an OLED screen, longer battery life, and faster Wi-Fi.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Valve Says It Has Sold ‘Multiple Millions’ of Steam Decks
Enlarge / Mood lighting orb not included. (credit: Valve)
Given the 2021 launch of Nintendo’s Switch OLED, it might seem a little weird that we’ve had to wait nearly two years after the original Steam Deck launch for today’s announcement of an OLED-equipped version. In interviews surrounding that announcement, though, Valve says an OLED screen was never in the cards for the original Steam Deck, given the timeline involved.
Valve designer Jeremy Selan tells IGN that “the display technology for the HDR display, we kicked that off prior to even having shipped the first [Steam Deck].” Selan added to Rock Paper Shotgun that work on this OLED update started “basically immediately” after the original unit was released.
“We knew we needed a better display, even from day one,” Selan told RPS. “It just takes multiple years, it takes a lot of money.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Why we had to wait nearly two years for an OLED Steam Deck
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is out November 10 and almost everything about it is unnecessarily confusing to figure out, from when it goes live to what it includes. Even the name is a labyrinth to untangle. Here’s when you can get started unraveling its violent mess of content and file installations for yourself.
Source: Kotaku – Here’s When You Can Start Playing Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer And Zombies
Long-time Slashdot reader Alain Williams writes: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is in the hospital in Mexico, according to multiple reports.
It is not currently clear what the cause is. The 73-year-old was in Mexico City attending the World Business Forum (WBF), a business conference. [According to TMZ, Wozniak finished his speech but then told his wife he was “feeling strange.” She reportedly insisted he go to the hospital.] An unnamed source from the WBF said that Mr Wozniak fainted on Wednesday at the event [minutes before his participation], according to CNN. TMZ reports that Wozniak was hospitalized after “suffering what appears to be vertigo.” Mexican media outlets were reporting that it was due to a possible stroke.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Hospitalized In Mexico City
Enlarge / People walk by a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT billboard in Times Square on June 23, 2022 in New York City. Sunglasses would have been a good idea for this year’s ApeFest. (credit: Getty | Noam Galai)
Lamps emitting ultraviolet light in the corner of a Bored Ape NFT event in Hong Kong last Saturday are the likely cause of severe eye and skin injuries among attendees, according to Yuga Labs, the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and host of the event.
The injuries reportedly occurred during “ApeFest,” a three-day annual meet-up of people who own Bored Ape NFTs—which sell for tens of thousands of dollars and, amid the 2021 NFT craze, saw highly inflated prices of hundreds of thousands of dollars. However regretful, owners of the cryptocurrency-backed, digital images of nonchalant cartoon primates are automatic members of the BAYC. This year, their annual club event ran from November 3–5 and promised “mayhem” and “One big night full of surprises.”
Soon after an ApeFest party Saturday night, some attendees reported severe pain and burning sensations in their eyes, as well as vision problems and skin irritation, according to Yuga Labs. Doctors and others on the Internet quickly speculated that the cause was UV exposure and photokeratitis (aka snow blindness, arc eye, or welder’s flash), which is akin to a sunburn on the cornea (the clear tissue covering the front of your eye) due to exposure to UV light. The New York Times reported as of Tuesday that the number of attendees injured was over 20.
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Source: Ars Technica – Bored Ape creator says UV lights at ApeFest burned attendees’ eyes and skin
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III multiplayer is already available in some parts of the world, and players are noticing some terrible spawn points on certain levels. Quarry in particular seems to be a death pit, with players appearing right in front of the enemy camp at various points just to get slaughtered for quick…
Source: Kotaku – Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III Already Has A Death Pit
Netflix made clear its intent to create a live-action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender years ago, with occasional information in the form of casting for the first season’s various characters. Things really began to kick into gear earlier this year as the streamer planted the show’s flag for a 2024 release, and…
Source: Gizmodo – Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Trailer Bends the Anime Into Live-Action
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Earlier this year, Mozilla acquired Fakespot, a startup that leverages AI and machine learning to identify fake and deceptive product reviews. Now, Mozilla is launching its first LLM (large language model) with the arrival of Fakespot Chat, an AI agent that will help consumers as they shop online by answering questions about the product or even suggesting questions that could be useful in your product research. […] Fakespot has been using AI, including generative AI technologies, to make the online shopping process more trustworthy, not less. For instance, it launched a generative AI feature called Pros and Cons last year, that could replace the need for reading reviews by writing up its own summaries of a product’s positives and negatives. The feature was trained on billions of data points, with the model itself using five different models under its hood, the company said.
This week, Fakespot Chat launched into testing, allowing shoppers to ask an AI chatbot about a product they’re considering, similar to how you could ask a salesperson for help if you were shopping in a physical store in the real world. The technology uses AI and machine learning to sort through the product reviews, sorting real from fake, to answer the user’s questions. The information from your chat session is saved to improve the experience for others, Mozilla notes, but users don’t have to create an account or divulge personal information for the experience to work. The feature is available via the Fakespot Analyzer or it can be used on an Amazon.com product from Fakespot’s browser extension. For the former, you’d copy and paste the URL of the product into the analyzer to ask your questions, but if using the browser add-on, the analysis starts automatically. When the analysis is complete, Fakespot Chat appears on the right-hand side of the analysis page alongside other features, like Pros and Cons, as well as Fakespot’s Review Grades and Highlights. You can then interrogate the AI agent about the product as you weigh your purchase decisions.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Fakespot Chat, Mozilla’s First LLM, Lets Online Shoppers Research Products Via an AI Chatbot
Good news! A new BioWare-developed Mass Effect game is in the works and it seems cool, based on the short teaser we got earlier this week. Bad news! It’s been reported that this next game in the series is likely years away from launching.
Source: Kotaku – Report: New Mass Effect Release So Far Away ‘It’s In Another Galaxy’
xFyro Hybrid ANC wireless Bluetooth earbuds are on sale for $29.97 right now (reg. $59). These earbuds feature three different feedback and feedforward microphones on each earbud, so noise can be captured and canceled at any frequency. These earbuds offer studio-quality audio with 7mm graphene drivers, are equipped…
Source: LifeHacker – xFyro Noise-Cancelling Earbuds Are On Sale For Right Now
Tumblr, a flailing social media site from a bygone era, may be run by a skeleton crew from now on. An alleged internal memo from parent company Automattic has made the rounds on social platforms (including Threads), stating it has “not gotten the expected results from our effort.” The decision appears to mark a sharp U-turn from a separate leak this summer, claiming Automattic was building a TikTok-like algorithmic feed into the aging site.
Although this doesn’t quite appear to be the end of the road for Tumblr, the note doesn’t sound promising for the platform’s future. It says “the majority of the 139 people” will switch to other Automattic projects, leaving a barebones gang of Trust & Safety and support workers to oversee Tumblr’s smoldering embers. Given how many brutal layoffs we’ve seen this year, handling the transition in a way that avoids job losses could be a silver lining.
Automattic, the company behind the blogging tool WordPress, acquired Tumblr in 2019 from Verizon, which landed the platform through its purchase of Yahoo! (Engadget’s parent company) in 2017. It likely didn’t help that its ownership turned into a game of musical chairs, and none of them seemed to find the right formula to get the microblogging network back on its feet. (Its controversial ban on adult content likely had something to do with that.)
“We are at the point where after 600+ person-years of effort put into Tumblr since the acquisition in 2019, we have not gotten the expected results from our effort, which was to have its revenue and usage above its previous peaks,” the alleged memo reads. After throwing in cliches about climbing mountains and being better to try and fail than not to try at all, the note claims the team’s next step is to “reflect and decide where else we should concentrate our energy together.”
Engadget reached out to Automattic for comment and confirmation but didn’t immediately receive a response. We’ll update this article if we hear back.
In addition to WordPress, Automattic’s other brands include the journaling app Day One, the e-commerce plugin WooCommerce, Gravatar and the note-taking app SimpleNote.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tumblrs-staff-is-reportedly-reduced-to-a-skeleton-crew-215853169.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Tumblr’s staff is reportedly reduced to a skeleton crew
Literally…Systems Approach Perhaps the single biggest aspect of systems building I’ve come to appreciate since shifting my focus from academic pursuits to open source software development is the importance of testing and test automation.…
Source: LXer – Open source work makes me appreciate software testing. It’s not an academic exercise
Early Black Friday deals are in full swing: Target, Best Buy, and Walmart all have their deals live already, and Amazon just put out their Black Friday plans (with some deals available now). But if you’re looking for even better deals on Blink and Ring security cameras—and some other Amazon devices—it’s Woot you want…
Source: LifeHacker – Woot Has Refurbished Blink and Ring Security Cameras for up to 71% Off
OpenAI is rolling out a new partnership program to collect datasets from third parties that it intends to use to train its AI models. The initiative, OpenAI Data Partnerships, will seek large-scale private and public information that it says is “not already easily accessible online to the public.” The company says the data it will collect doesn’t necessarily have to be quantitative or in text formats — the program will also accept images, audio or video.
Notably, the company says it’s on the lookout for data on “any topic” and in “any language” so long as it “expresses human intention,” which it likens to long-form essays or transcribed conversations. Human-centric data collected by OpenAI is expected to help the company improve tools like its automatic speech recognition technology which is used to transcribe spoken words. This initiative also lines up with ChatGPT’s recent expansion to support voice queries to engage with users in a conversational manner. Exposing its AI models to more information that teaches it how to hold up human-like conversations will only further improve this feature and other tools that will follow in function.
Announcing OpenAI Data Partnerships — help steer the future of AI by collaborating on public and private datasets with us. https://t.co/4tbi5SZ6sS
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 9, 2023
The model testing conducted throughout the data partnership program will also naturally expand the capabilities of OpenAI’s consumer-facing GPT-4 Turbo, which has been updated to provide users with more complex and meaningful responses. OpenAI says it has already started working with interested organizations, including authoritative bodies like the Icelandic government. Through curated datasets, OpenAI says its working to improve GPT-4’s ability to comprehend queries made in the Icelandic language.
If a private or public organization wants to participate in the program, a representative can submit a form on the company’s website and share information on the data type and size that they intend to share. There are two pathways for datasets. The first is the Open-Source archive, which is ideal for datasets relevant to training language models. However, submissions made to it will be public for anyone to use. Alternatively, OpenAI says a company can submit information through its private dataset pathway which will be funneled to train proprietary AI models, which the company says includes their “foundation models” and “fine-tuned and custom models.” This is recommended for companies or institutions that want to keep their data confidential. But in that same regard, OpenAI says it is not looking for datasets that contain sensitive or personal information.
ChatGPT has already set records for its soaring user base. It has about 100 million weekly active users around the world, meaning privacy will only continue to be a focal point for the tool. Previously, Samsung employees were put in the hot seat for leaking sensitive data to the AI model. While OpenAI claims it does not use data generated by its API to train its models unless a user explicitly submits information through an opt-in form, all eyes will be on how the company handles the data collected through this initiative, especially the private datasets.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-wants-to-work-with-organizations-to-build-new-ai-training-datasets-214548902.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – OpenAI wants to work with organizations to build new AI training datasets
Google executives defended its internal campaign “Project Hug,” which enticed 20 developers to not create app stores competitive with Google Play according to Epic Games, in an ongoing trial Thursday.
Source: Gizmodo – Google Denies That Its ‘Project Hug’ Bribed 20 Developers
Apparently Black Friday has already started for the folks at LG. The monitor manufacturer has heavily discounted several of its premium Mini LED and OLED TVs just before the holiday shopping season. So if you’re looking for a new TV to brighten up your living room or bedroom, now’s the perfect time to jump in. Discounts are as high as 27%
Source: Hot Hardware – Early Black Friday Deals On LG Mini LED And OLED TVs Up To 27% Off Are Lit
It’s a weird time to be a Fitbit user. Google has stopped selling Fitbit devices in key markets around the world. The company quietly pulled several models of its fitness-centric wearables from store shelves in countries across several continents.
Source: Gizmodo – Google Stops Selling Fitbits in Regions Where it Doesn’t Sell Pixels
