Unlike a lot of other upcoming movies, Deadpool 3 is still on track to open as scheduled, in May of 2024. In a new interview, director Shawn Levy explains that much of the Ryan Reynolds-Hugh Jackman Marvel movie was already filmed when the SAG-AFTRA strike shut down production. He also dropped in a hint about some…
Source: Gizmodo – Shawn Levy Dropped a Big Star Wars Homage Into Deadpool 3
Another former Facebook employee is going public with allegations that the company failed to act on its own research showing that young Instagram users were having harmful experiences on the platform. Arturo Bejar, a former Facebook employee and consultant for Instagram, is scheduled to testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, November, 7.
Bejar, who detailed his efforts to raise the alarm internally about Instagram safety issues to The Wall Street Journal, was a Facebook employee between 2009 and 2015 and returned to the company in 2019 to advise Instagram’s well-being team. He told The Journal that internal research showed that more than 20 percent of users younger than 16 “felt worse about themselves after viewing others’ posts” and that 13 percent “experienced unwanted sexual advances in the past seven days.”
Bejar’s disclosures come two years after another former Facebook employee, Frances Huagen, came forward with internal research about Instagram’s harmful effects on teen mental health, along with other disclosures about controversial decisions within the company. Soon after, Instagram paused work on a dedicated app for kids, and dozens of states opened an investigation into the company.
Last week, 41 state attorneys general sued Meta for “harmful and psychologically manipulative product features” that harmed the mental health of its youngest users. According to The Wall Street Journal, Bejar consulted with state officials on their case. Now, he’s set to publicly air his experiences in front of Congress,
“From Arturo’s disclosures, we now know that Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, and other Meta executives were personally warned that millions of teens face bullying, eating disorder material, illicit drugs, and sexual exploitation, often within minutes of opening the app,” Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal, both of whom sit on the judiciary committee, said in a statement. “Rather than address these deadly harms, Facebook continued to hide this information from the public and Congressional oversight, ignored recommendations to protect teens, rolled back safety tools, and dismantled teams responsible for kids’ safety.”
Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company told The Wall Street Journal it disagreed with Bejar’s claims that well-being research wasn’t addressed, and said the company had introduced several safety updates as a result of the work of Bejar and his team.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/another-former-facebook-employee-will-testify-at-congress-about-safety-issues-at-instagram-185339860.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Another former Facebook employee will testify at Congress about safety issues at Instagram
Usage barely measurable so ax will swing on compression dinosaur. The Theora video compression codec is finally being put out to pasture as Google pulls it from Chrome and Mozilla mulls the same for Firefox.…
Source: LXer – Theora video codec to be coded out from Chrome and Firefox
Role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 lets players summon purple lightning and kiss parasitic Cthulhu emperors, but it won’t let them give out hugs. Fans of the Dungeons & Dragons game routinely lament this small injustice, wishing badly to comfort their favorite party members during the game’s sometimes devastating…
Source: Kotaku – Baldur’s Gate 3 Dataminers Find Evidence Of A Much-Requested Romance Option
Can you smell it? Black Friday is rapidly approaching, and some companies have already begun the onslaught of sales. Solo Stove, for instance, has just cut the ribbon on its annual Black Friday sale, offering discounts on numerous fire pits and related items and accessories. The biggest discount here is for the Ranger Backyard Bundle 2.0, which now costs $320 instead of $465. That’s a savings of $145. The Yukon 2.0 bundle goes even further, with a discount of $245.
These bundles include a next-gen fire pit, a marked improvement over the original, along with plenty of accessories, like the new base plate and ash pan. You also get a stand, a lid, a weather-resistant enclosure and even a carrying case for those BBQ-driven beach trips.
We praised the removable base plate and ash pan with the 2.0 series, as these tools eliminated the messy cleanup process involved with previous releases. We also enjoyed the proprietary 360-degree airflow technology, allowing for an efficient burn for long periods of time. As a matter of the fact, the only significant downside here is the normal price, and this sale helps to alleviate those concerns.
The fire pit bundles are not the only discount available via Solo Stove’s Black Friday sale, though they are the most significant. You can grab the well-regarded Pi Prime pizza oven for $300, a savings of $50. If you are filled to the brim with fire pit accessories, you can also buy the Ranger 2.0 by itself for $200 instead of $230.
Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/solo-stoves-black-friday-deals-include-up-to-245-off-fire-pit-bundles-184011930.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Solo Stove’s Black Friday deals include up to 5 off fire pit bundles
If you’re a regular reader of HotHardware, then you are assuredly aware that Intel’s next-generation Meteor Lake processors are coming, along with a massive overhaul of the company’s branding. The new chiplet-based CPUs will reset Intel’s generation counter and be known as the first-generation “Core Ultra” processors, dropping the “i”.
We’ve
Source: Hot Hardware – Intel Non-Ultra Core 7 150U Laptop CPU Confusingly Breaks Cover
The last year has seen an explosion of interest in generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Now, you can simply tell a computer what you want it to create, and it might just be good enough to replace a human. These tools are causing consternation in some corners of the internet, but others have embraced them. One AI enthusiast has
Source: Hot Hardware – This Game Was Created In ChatGPT, DALL-E 3 And Midjourney And You Can Play It Now
The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes were sent out on Thursday for the Linux 6.7 merge window…
Source: Phoronix – KVM Virtualization With Linux 6.7 Adds LoongArch, Up To 4096 x86 vCPUs
You have an opportunity. If you turn back now, you can live out the rest of your days without absorbing the cosmic horror that is the music video for “Now and Then,” or as Paul McCartney’s marketing team puts it, “the last Beatles song.”
Source: Gizmodo – Peter Jackson’s Video for The Beatles’ AI Song Has Some Jump Scares
Throwing away food really bums me out. I’ll do anything to prevent it, including meeting friends at BYOF bars and pushing food onto them. When I can’t do that, I’m a master of leftovers. I’ve concocted some really excellent re-works, like leftover rice salad, leftover cheeseball mac and cheese, or turning leftover…
Source: LifeHacker – Please, Air Fry Some Frico Gratin Potato Squares
Enlarge / An image OpenAI created using DALL-E 3. (credit: OpenAI)
Artists have spent the past year fighting companies that have been training AI image generators—including popular tools like the impressively photorealistic Midjourney or the ultra-sophisticated DALL-E 3—on their original works without consent or compensation. Now, the United States has promised to finally get serious about addressing their copyright concerns raised by AI, President Joe Biden said in his much-anticipated executive order on AI, which was signed this week.
The US Copyright Office had already been seeking public input on AI concerns over the past few months through a comment period ending on November 15. Biden’s executive order has clarified that following this comment period, the Copyright Office will publish the results of its study. And then, within 180 days of that publication—or within 270 days of Biden’s order, “whichever comes later”—the Copyright Office’s director will consult with Biden to “issue recommendations to the President on potential executive actions relating to copyright and AI.”
“The recommendations shall address any copyright and related issues discussed in the United States Copyright Office’s study, including the scope of protection for works produced using AI and the treatment of copyrighted works in AI training,” Biden’s order said.
Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Artists may “poison” AI models before Copyright Office can issue guidance
The Google Project Zero blog celebrates
the launch of the Pixel 8 handset, the first to make use of Arm’s
Memory Tagging Extension (MTE). Linux has supported MTE since the 5.10 release in 2020,
but that support has only now shown up (in experimental form) in an
available handset.
I think this is a huge improvement for the general security of the
device – many zero-click attack surfaces involve large amounts of
unsafe C/C++ code, whether that’s WebRTC for calling, or one of the
many media or image file parsing libraries. MTE is not a silver
bullet for memory safety – but the release of the first production
device with the ability to run almost all user-mode applications
with synchronous-MTE is a huge step forward, and something that’s
worth celebrating!
The article includes detailed instructions for how to turn the MTE feature
on.
Source: LWN.net – First handset with MTE on the market (Project Zero)
There’s a good chance that when Fedora 40 is released in April, that it will become the first major Linux distro to be released without X.
The post Will Fedora 40 Drop X and Totally Embrace Wayland? appeared first on FOSS Force.
Source: FOSS Force – Will Fedora 40 Drop X and Totally Embrace Wayland?
Loki (Tom Hiddleston) travels through dying timelines to find his team—but has to decipher what’s really reality, as everything is crumbling—in Loki episode five, “Science/Fiction,” now streaming on Disney+.
Source: Gizmodo – Loki Gives Its Hero His Own Place in the Multiverse
Just over a month after Epic Games cut nearly 900 employees, players have come roaring back to Fortnite to play its new nostalgia trip through the battle royale’s original map. Player count trackers like Fortnite.gg estimate the hit free-to-play game peaked at over 5 million concurrent players in the last 24 hours…
Source: Kotaku – Fortnite Blows Up Again After Original Map Returns
LibreOffice 7.5.8 is here one and a half months after LibreOffice 7.5.7, which was an emergency, unscheduled update that addressed a security vulnerability in the WebP codec. LibreOffice 7.5.8 contains a total of 21 bug fixes to make the LibreOffice 7.5 series more stable and reliable.
The post LibreOffice 7.5.8 Is Here as the Last Update in the Series, Upgrade to LibreOffice 7.6 Now appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – LibreOffice 7.5.8 Is Here as the Last Update in the Series, Upgrade to LibreOffice 7.6 Now
These Mini Dual-Tube Digital Night Vision Binoculars can help you see up to 300 meters at night, even in complete darkness—and they are on sale for $79.97 (reg. $159) right now, no coupon code needed. They also offer the ability to take high-quality photos and videos even in low-light conditions, thanks to their…
Source: LifeHacker – These Night-Vision Binoculars Are on Sale for
YouTube’s crackdown on ad blockers is hurting the companies who make them. Multiple ad blocking companies say that thousands of people are uninstalling their products after YouTube started showing warnings to people trying to watch videos on its website with ad blockers enabled.
One of the companies, AdGuard, told Wired that more than 11,000 people have uninstalled its Chrome extension each day since October 9, compared to 6,000 uninstallations per day before YouTube implemented the change. On October 18, 52,000 people uninstalled AdGuard, the company’s CTO Andrey Meshkov told Wired. However, installations of AdGuard’s paid version, which YouTube’s crackdown doesn’t affect, went up.
Another ad blocking company, Ghostery, said that its usage was flat in October as it experienced three to five times the daily number of installs as well as uninstalls. Notably, the company said that more than 90 percent of its users who completed a survey about why they uninstalled the product said they did so because the tool no longer worked with YouTube.
Since YouTube’s crackdown only seems to affect people who access its website through Chrome on laptops and desktops, some users also tried to use other browsers as a workaround. Ghostery told Wired that its installations of Microsoft’s Edge browser went up by 30 percent in October compared to September.
YouTube ads are increasingly contributing more to Google’s overall revenue. The company sold more than $22 billion in ads on the platform from the beginning of this year through September. But the streaming platform is also trying to push more people to pay for YouTube Premium, which gets rid of ads, lets people download videos, stream videos in higher quality and access YouTube Music. Earlier this year, the company bumped up YouTube Premium’s pricing by $2 to $14 a month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/thousands-of-people-are-uninstalling-ad-blockers-after-youtubes-big-crackdown-174009041.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Thousands of people are uninstalling ad blockers after YouTube’s big crackdown
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, first launched in 2021 to explore the Trojan asteroids trapped near Jupiter, has made an interesting discovery. The spacecraft found an asteroid, nicknamed Dinky, that actually has a smaller asteroid orbiting it, as originally reported by Scientific American. That’s right. It’s basically a moon with its own moon. It’s an ouroboros of cosmic curiosity.
The technical term here is a binary asteroid pair and Dinky, whose real name is Dinkinesh, was spotted by Lucy during a quick fly by. That’s when the spacecraft spotted the smaller “moon” orbiting it.
“A binary was certainly a possibility,” Jessica Sunshine, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, told Scientific American. “But it was not expected, and it’s really cool.”
As a matter of fact, the fly by itself wasn’t supposed to find anything of note. It was simply a trial run for the team to hone its skills before investigating the aforementioned Trojan asteroids orbiting the sun ahead of and behind Jupiter. The team wanted to make sure Lucy’s probe would successfully latch onto a space rock, even when both objects were moving extremely fast. Guess what? It worked. Hal Levinson, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the Lucy mission, said that the test was “amazingly successful.”
As for Dinky and its, uh, even dinkier satellite, NASA scientists still have a long way to go with its investigation, as only about one third of the relevant data has been beamed down to Earth. NASA has released a series of images showing Dinky and its pseudo-moon, but not any actual data as of yet.
Even just from these images, however, you can tell a lot about these two celestial bodies. There’s a visible equatorial ridge on the main body of Dinky aka Dinkinesh and a secondary ridge-line branching off from it. The parent asteroid is covered in craters, likely the result of numerous hits by other asteroids. Levinson says that there are more images to come of the secondary satellite and that these pictures suggest that the junior asteroid has some “interesting” stuff going on. He goes on to say that the shape is “really bizarre.”
Binary asteroid pairs are not rare, as researchers have found that around 15 percent of near-Earth asteroids boast a cute lil orbital companion. NASA and affiliated researchers are still waiting for more data on the pair, including color images and spectroscopy that should shed some more light on the two asteroids. Levinson says “there’s a lot of cool stuff to come.”
In the meantime, Lucy will continue on its original mission, to investigate those mysterious Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. It’ll make contact with one in 2025.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasa-discovered-that-an-asteroid-named-dinky-actually-has-its-own-moon-173028204.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – NASA discovered that an asteroid named Dinky actually has its own moon
The anime-inspired action-RPG Genshin Impact will get a pretty substantial update later this month that introduces two new playable characters, an expanded region to explore, and a couple of formidable bosses waiting to beat the brakes off you.
Source: Kotaku – Everything We Know About Genshin Impact’s 4.2 Update
