Somehow fans of Star Wars’ Kylo Ren and Rey Skywalker made the news for very different reasons this week. But outside of big drama in the sci-fi book world, we also got the last of Doctor Who’s anniversay specials, a new Dune Part Two trailer, and more in the list of our most read stories, so here’s you might have…
Source: Gizmodo – The Cait Corrain Review Controversy Explained, and More Top Pop Culture News of the Week
It’s Saturday morning and I’m still thinking about the end of E3, once the biggest gaming show on earth, and the teenage dream destination for many Gen Z / Millennial gamers, by which I mean: me. Will there be a gaming (or tech) show in 2024 that will match my enthusiasm (in the past) for E3? Probably not.
Apple is also testing out improved anti-theft software for iPhone users — just don’t get your phone stolen before the feature gets out of beta.
This week:
📲🥷 iOS 17.3’s Stolen Device Protection will make life harder for iPhone thieves
🥚🤖 Tesla’s latest Optimus robot can handle an egg without breaking it
And read this:
Social media account takeovers continue to happen, and with many reliant on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for their income, an attack can derail everything. High-level hackers still tend to seek entities with deep pockets, targeting them with highly complicated attacks. But much of the cyber criminality today is social engineering jobs, aimed at mid-level creators with less experience (and resources). Katie Malone reports on how some victims have lost much to social engineering hacks.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-the-sad-end-of-e3-140035020.html?src=rss
Despite The Game Awards officially capping off the end of video game news for 2023, we’ve still got stories to share, from GTA 6 controversies to the inglorious end of E3. Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.
Source: Kotaku – The Week’s Biggest Gaming News, From E3 To Steam Deck Huffing
A change merged to the X.Org Server Git for the generic xf86-video-modesetting DDX driver is helping conserve some power consumption at least for Intel graphics by determining the optimal hardware cursor size…
Source: Phoronix – xf86-video-modesetting Driver Optimization Helps Conserve Intel Power Consumption
We’ve made it to the fifth installment of my Christmas Pudding Chronicles and the fourth week of aging a boozy English-style fruit-studded cake fit to flambé on Christmas day. For those just jumping in, you can read about what started this figgy pudding series here, how to make the cake, how to “cure” it, and a bit about the history of aging desserts (sometimes in animal stomachs) in these posts. This is the final week before the big show on Christmas day, which makes today a great one for another brandy soak and preparing a “hard sauce.”
At this point it feels like I’m caring for a little cupboard companion. I’ve been storing it in the cabinet where I keep pots and pans, so we have a check-in every day. Every time I go to get a frying pan out of my cabinet, we lock eyes, quickly nod to each other, and I close the door. Today is “feeding” day so Li’l Pud gets to come out and receive sustenance in the form of brandy. Soaking the cake once a week with a tablespoon or two of brandy is traditional, but an optional part of the Christmas pudding tradition. I wanted the full experience so I opted in.
I’ve tried applying the brandy with a pastry brush, a spritzer, and this week with a turkey baster. I was tempted to stick the baster directly into my brandy bottle but something about it felt wrong, plus I wouldn’t be able to measure it since my baster doesn’t have that feature. Instead I measured out one and a half tablespoons into a bowl and basted from there. The turkey baster was satisfying for precision application, but unless an interesting option falls into the comments section here, I’ll go back to the pastry brush; it’s the simplest way to do the job quickly and easily.
After the brandy soak, I thought to myself, “Ok, let’s get you dressed up,” and re-covered my Christmas pudding. I know now that I could never be an animal farmer. I’ve already named a four week-old fruit cake and when the day comes to harvest, well, I just don’t know how I’m going to take it.
Hard sauce is a traditional accompaniment to figgy pudding, but it’s more accurately known as brandy butter. “Hard sauce” inspires more mystery since sauces are meant to flow, but it turns out it’s basically buttercream frosting with brandy. I suppose it will be hard if it’s in the fridge. Was I expecting something more dynamic? Yes. However, I got over the disappointment once I tasted it.
Just like with American-style buttercream, you only need a few ingredients: butter, sugar, and flavoring. I decided to use Mary Berry’s recipe for brandy butter because she’s my other favorite English chef (along with Nigella, whose Christmas pudding recipe I used as a guide), and she might be the only Dame I’d trust to feed me.
I took a single liberty with her recipe. Mary Berry uses unsalted butter, but seeing as this is a condiment meant to be spread on cake, I think we’d be selling ourselves short without some salt. Salted butter is clutch for an excellent frosting, and if you don’t have it then add a quarter teaspoon of salt to this mixture.
Use soft butter if you’re mixing this by hand; it should be the consistency of mayonnaise. Add the sugars and mix them in with a rubber spatula. Berry’s recipe indicates light muscovado sugar, but if you can’t get your hands on it, light or dark brown sugar will be just fine. Add the brandy and whisk it in until emulsified. If your emulsion breaks or looks grainy, it could be too cold. It could also be an indication there is too much brandy. If it’s too cold, try microwaving it for a few seconds, literally. Don’t press start and walk away. Whisk it again. If the brandy is the culprit, add a tablespoon more of powdered sugar, and whisk the heck out of it.
The end result is sweet and buttery with caramel notes from the brandy, and I’m very excited to smear this on a warm slice of fruit cake. Although you taste the liquor, it’s surprisingly tame for what seems like a large measurement at first. Save this brandy butter at room temperature if you’ll be flambéing within a week; it’ll be easier to spread on the cake that way. Otherwise, store it in a covered container in the fridge. Let it come up to room temperature the morning you plan on using it. Enjoy brandy butter with Christmas pudding, of course, but you can slather it on muffins, toast, biscuits or any other carb you’d like to make boozy and sweet.
Next week will be the final installment of this series. I’ll be re-steaming, flambéing, and tucking in to a slice of figgy pudding. Check back in next week to read about Li’l Pud’s big day.
(Adapted from Mary Berry’s recipe)
Ingredients:
1 stick salted butter, soft
⅔ cup (3 ounces) powdered sugar
⅓ cup packed (3 ounces) brown sugar
3 tablespoons brandy
In a medium bowl, stir the butter and both sugars together with a rubber spatula until smooth and slightly fluffy. Stir in the brandy. Once the brandy is mostly incorporated, switch to a whisk to thoroughly emulsify the frosting.
Source: LifeHacker – Allie’s Christmas Pudding Chronicles: Making a Hard Sauce
2023 offered up another exciting year in the world of consumer electronics, delivering meaningful upgrades to some of our already-favorite gear of last year, as well as some pleasant surprises.
Source: Gizmodo – The Best Gadgets of 2023
Meta Quest users will now be able to write reports, edit spreadsheets and create presentations — if they event want to do any of those tasks on a VR headset, that is. Android Central reports that support for the basic Microsoft Office suite has arrived on the original Oculus Quest, the Meta Quest 2, the Meta Quest Pro, and the latest model, the Meta Quest 3. Users can now download Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint from the Meta Quest store for free.
The company first revealed that it was going to launch Microsoft 365 app experiences for its headsets during its Connect 2022 event. It also promised users access to Outlook, Teams and a Windows experience as part of its partnership with Microsoft. To be able to use the basic Office suite apps on their device, users will need to have and log into their Microsoft account. The app files are pretty small because they run on the cloud, so they’re quick to download and can run side by side for the multitaskers out there.
According to The Verge, though, the apps aren’t exactly optimized for virtual reality, so users may have to contend with tiny icons and other elements that don’t work as well in the environment. In addition, it’s not easy typing on the Quest’s onscreen keyboard, so users may have to link Bluetooth accessories if they need to get some serious work done.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-office-apps-arrive-on-meta-quest-vr-headsets-123030297.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Microsoft Office apps arrive on Meta Quest VR headsets
Enlarge / Extreme E travels to remote locations by boat and brings its own energy infrastructure with it. Currently, it makes its own hydrogen on site and uses that to charge EV batteries, but in 2025, the cars will switch to hydrogen fuel cells. (credit: Colin McMaster / LAT Images)
ANTOFAGASTA, Chile — On a picnic bench in Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the most remote locations on Earth, Alejandro Agag is holding court.
“Welcome to the edge of the world,” he laughs, gesturing toward the vast desert around him. A gust of wind kicks a cloud of sand and dust across the table. “It’s amazing, this place.”
The 53-year-old Spanish entrepreneur is taking in the sights and sounds of the season 3 finale of Extreme E, the off-road electric racing series he launched in 2021. Part of the series’ ethos is that it races exclusively in regions of the globe that are heavily impacted by climate change (such as the Atacama Desert—the driest, non-polar region on Earth), typically with no spectators present.
Read 28 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Here’s how an off-road racing series will make its own hydrogen fuel
If you ever wanted help picking out an outfit, Meta just rolled out a beat for its Ray-Ban Smart Glasses that’ll give you fashion advice based on what’s in your closet. Meanwhile, the Apple and Beeper Mini messaging saga took a dramatic turn. Gizmodo covered all this news and more, and you can catch up with our weekly…
Source: Gizmodo – Meta Ray-Bans Hate Your Outfit, PlayStation 5 Pro Rumors, and More Top Product News of the Week
On Friday in addition to Intel submitting their new Xe kernel graphics driver to DRM-Next ahead of Linux 6.8, the red team sent in their latest AMDGPU/AMDKFD kernel driver changes ahead of this next kernel cycle. Exciting on the AMD side is landing the AMD color management properties support! But on the downside, it’s compile-time disabled for the time being…
Source: Phoronix – AMD Stages The Radeon Graphics Color Management Code For Linux 6.8
Manjaro 23.1 was released overnight as the newest version of this popular Arch Linux based desktop Linux distribution…
Source: Phoronix – Manjaro 23.1 Released With Linux 6.6 LTS, Pipewire 1.0 & Desktop Updates
Box64 and Box86 are out with new releases this weekend for these open-source projects allowing x86_64 and x86 binaries to run on ARM64 Linux systems…
Source: Phoronix – Box64 v0.2.6 Brings Support For More CPU Extensions, Better Syscall Emulation
Enlarge (credit: lovelypeace via Getty)
A little over three years have passed since McDonald’s sent out an email to thousands of its restaurant owners around the world that abruptly cut short the future of a three-person startup called Kytch—and with it, perhaps one of McDonald’s best chances for fixing its famously out-of-order ice cream machines.
Until then, Kytch had been selling McDonald’s restaurant owners a popular Internet-connected gadget designed to attach to their notoriously fragile and often broken soft-serve McFlurry dispensers, manufactured by McDonald’s equipment partner Taylor. The Kytch device would essentially hack into the ice cream machine’s internals, monitor its operations, and send diagnostic data over the Internet to an owner or manager to help keep it running. But despite Kytch’s efforts to solve the Golden Arches’ intractable ice cream problems, a McDonald’s email in November 2020 warned its franchisees not to use Kytch, stating that it represented a safety hazard for staff. Kytch says its sales dried up practically overnight.
Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – This “smoking gun” killed the McDonald’s ice cream hackers’ startup
KDE developers remain very busy working toward the release of the Plasma 6 desktop in late February…
Source: Phoronix – KDE Receives Many Bug Fixes Ahead Of Christmas
California’s Civil Rights Department (CRD) has announced that it has reached a settlement agreement with Activision Blizzard for a case it filed in 2021, accusing the company of systemic gender discrimination and fostering a culture that encouraged rampant misogyny and sexual harassment. The agency, which sued the developer when it was still called the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, said Activision Blizzard will have to pay $54 million to settle its allegations. Out of the total, $45.75 million will go towards a fund meant to compensate female employees and contract workers who worked for the company in California from October 12, 2015 until December 31, 2020.
In addition, the developer is expected to retain an independent consultant to evaluate its promotion policies and training materials, as well as to make recommendations based on what they see. If you’ll recall, the agency’s lawsuit alleged that female employees were overlooked for promotions and were paid less than their male colleagues. According to Marketwatch, though, the settlement will also see the agency withdraw its claims that there was widespread sexual harassment at the company. The department will reportedly have to file an amended complaint that only focuses on gender-based pay gap and discrimination.
California’s original lawsuit detailed how Activision Blizzard condoned a “frat boy” culture that encouraged certain unsavory behaviors. Male employees allegedly did “cube crawls,” wherein they routinely groped and sexually harassed their female colleagues at their desks. A spokesperson for the company told Marketwatch that it is “gratified that the CRD has agreed to file an amended complaint that entirely withdraws its 2021 claims alleging widespread and systemic workplace harassment at Activision Blizzard.” They added: “We appreciate the importance of the issues addressed in this agreement and we are dedicated to fully implementing all the new obligations we have assumed as part of it. We are committed to ensuring fair compensation and promotion policies and practices for all our employees, and we will continue our efforts regarding inclusion of qualified candidates from underrepresented communities in outreach, recruitment, and retention.”
Meanwhile, the department told the website that its announcement, which contains no reference to its earlier sexual harassment allegations, “largely speaks for itself with respect to the historic nature of this more than $50 million settlement agreement, which will bring direct relief and compensation to women who were harmed by the company’s discriminatory practices.”
As The Wall Street Journal noted when it reported the settlement, this lawsuit set the stage for Microsoft to acquire the developer. After reports came out that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick kept sexual harassment allegations within the company from reaching its board of directors, the developer’s shares fell, giving Microsoft the opening to offer a deal. The $68.7 billion acquisition was finalized in October after almost two years of contending with regulators trying to block the purchase.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/activision-blizzard-will-pay-54-million-to-settle-californias-gender-discrimination-lawsuit-101149166.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Activision Blizzard will pay million to settle California’s gender discrimination lawsuit
If you’re looking for the Wordle answer for December 16, 2023 read on. We’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solution. Today’s puzzle is maybe a little harder than usual; I got it in four. Beware, there are spoilers below for December 16, Wordle #910! Keep scrolling if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Wordle game.
Wordle lives here on the New York Times website. A new puzzle goes live every day at midnight, your local time.
Start by guessing a five-letter word. The letters of the word will turn green if they’re correct, yellow if you have the right letter in the wrong place, or gray if the letter isn’t in the day’s secret word at all. For more, check out our guide to playing Wordle here, and my strategy guide here for more advanced tips. (We also have more information at the bottom of this post, after the hints and answers.)
Ready for the hints? Let’s go!
We’ll define common letters as those that appear in the old typesetters’ phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU. (Memorize this! Pronounce it “Edwin Shirdloo,” like a name, and pretend he’s a friend of yours.)
Three of today’s five letters are in our list of common ones. The other two are mediumish.
It’s worldly.
Nope, five different letters today.
There are two (different) vowels in today’s word.
Today’s word starts with G.
Today’s word ends with E.
Ready? Today’s word is GLOBE.
ARISE got me the green E, TOUCH the yellow O. Next thing to do is find out where the O goes, and knock out a few more consonants. BLOKE was a good guess, since the L was correct, the O was in the right spot, and I knew that I had a B as the second-to-last letter. GLOBE is the only obvious word that fits.
Wordle 910 4/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟨🟩🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
The idea of Wordle is to guess the day’s secret word. When you first open the Wordle game, you’ll see an empty grid of letters. It’s up to you to make the first move: type in any five-letter word.
Now, you can use the colors that are revealed to get clues about the word:
Green means you correctly guessed a letter, and it’s in the correct position. (For example, if you guess PARTY, and the word is actually PURSE, the P and R will be green.)
Yellow means the letter is somewhere in the word, but not in the position you guessed it. (For example, if you guessed PARTY, but the word is actually ROAST, the R, A and T will all be yellow.)
Gray means the letter is not in the solution word at all. (If you guessed PARTY and everything is gray, then the solution cannot be PURSE or ROAST.)
With all that in mind, guess another word, and then another, trying to land on the correct word before you run out of chances. You get six guesses, and then it’s game over.
What should you play for that first guess? The best starters tend to contain common letters, to increase the chances of getting yellow and green squares to guide your guessing. (And if you get all grays when guessing common letters, that’s still excellent information to help you rule out possibilities.) There isn’t a single “best” starting word, but the New York Times’s Wordle analysis bot has suggested starting with one of these:
CRANE
TRACE
SLANT
CRATE
CARTE
Meanwhile, an MIT analysis found that you’ll eliminate the most possibilities in the first round by starting with one of these:
SALET
REAST
TRACE
CRATE
SLATE
Other good picks might be ARISE or ROUND. Words like ADIEU and AUDIO get more vowels in play, but you could argue that it’s better to start with an emphasis on consonants, using a starter like RENTS or CLAMP. Choose your strategy, and see how it plays out.
We have a few guides to Wordle strategy, which you might like to read over if you’re a serious student of the game. This one covers how to use consonants to your advantage, while this one focuses on a strategy that uses the most common letters. In this advanced guide, we detail a three-pronged approach for fishing for hints while maximizing your chances of winning quickly.
The biggest thing that separates Wordle winners from Wordle losers is that winners use their guesses to gather information about what letters are in the word. If you know that the word must end in -OUND, don’t waste four guesses on MOUND, ROUND, SOUND, and HOUND; combine those consonants and guess MARSH. If the H lights up in yellow, you know the solution.
One more note on strategy: the original Wordle used a list of about 2,300 solution words, but after the game was bought by the NYT, the game now has an editor who hand-picks the solutions. Sometimes they are slightly tricky words that wouldn’t have made the original list, and sometimes they are topical. For example, FEAST was the solution one Thanksgiving. So keep in mind that there may be a theme.
If you can’t get enough of five-letter guessing games and their kin, the best Wordle alternatives, ranked by difficulty, include:
Dordle and Quordle, which ask you to play two (Dordle) or four (Quordle) puzzles at the same time, with the same guesses. There is also Octordle, with eight puzzles, and Sedecordle, with 16.
Waffle, which shows you several five-letter words, scrambled in a grid; you play by swapping the letters around until you solve.
Absurdle, which changes the solution after each guess, but needs to stay consistent with its previous feedback. You have to strategically back it into a corner until there is only one possible word left; then you guess it, and win.
Squabble, in which you play Wordle against other people with a timer running. You take damage if you spend too much time between guesses; winner is the last one standing.
Antiwordle, in which you are trying not to guess the day’s solution. You’re required to reuse any letters that you (oops) guessed correctly, so the longer it takes you, the better you are at the game.
Source: LifeHacker – Today’s Wordle Hints (and Answer) for Saturday, December 16, 2023
Don’t let those similar-looking words TRICK you; today is another easy one. If you’re looking for the Connections answer for Saturday, December 16, 2023, read on—I’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solutions to all four categories. Along the way, I’ll explain the meanings of the trickier words and we’ll learn how everything fits together. Beware, there are spoilers below for December 16, NYT Connections #188! Read on if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Connections game.
If you want an easy way to come back to our Connections hints every day, bookmark this page. You can also find our past hints there as well, in case you want to know what you missed in a previous puzzle.
Below, I’ll give you some oblique hints at today’s Connections answers. And farther down the page, I’ll reveal the themes and the answers. Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!
Nope, everything is pretty accessible today.
Here are some spoiler-free hints for the groupings in today’s Connections:
Yellow category – Things to bring to the garden plot.
Green category – A sinister plan.
Blue category – Beguile.
Purple category – Sound effects.
Technically yes (for the purple category), but there’s no special trick you need to understand or puzzle through.
Ready to hear the answers? Keep scrolling if you want a little more help.
We’re about to give away some of the answers. Scroll slowly if you don’t want the whole thing spoiled. (The full solution is a bit farther down.)
A SICKLE might be best known from the Communist symbol expressing solidarity between industrial workers (the hammer) and farm workers (the SICKLE). A SICKLE is a handheld tool used for cutting down swaths of vegetation, either to harvest crops or to clear an area of weeds. It’s commonly confused for a scythe, the thing the Grim Reaper carries.
A PLOT can be an area of land (as a cemetery PLOT or a farm PLOT) or it can be a plan, often drawn on paper. Sometimes a sneaky, devious plan.
PLEASE is the “magic word” to make a request sound polite, but it’s also a verb meaning to DELIGHT someone.
PLOP is nothing but the sound of a PLOP. If you’d like a literary reference, there is a famous haiku in which a frog jumps into water; various translations convey it as “the sound of water,” “plop,” or “kerplunk!”
Yellow: FARMING TOOLS
Green: SCHEME
Blue: MAKE HAPPY
Purple: ONOMATOPOEIA
Ready to learn the answers to today’s Connections puzzle? I give them all away below.
The yellow grouping is considered to be the most straightforward. The theme for today’s yellow group is FARMING TOOLS and the words are: HOE, PLOW, RAKE, SICKLE.
The green grouping is supposed to be the second-easiest. The theme for today’s green category is SCHEME and the words are: PLOT, PLOY, RUSE, TRICK.
The blue grouping is the second-hardest. The theme for today’s blue category is MAKE HAPPY and the words are: AMUSE, DELIGHT, PLEASE, TICKLE.
The purple grouping is considered to be the hardest. The theme for today’s purple category is ONOMATOPOEIA and the words are: BANG, PLOP, SPLASH, THUD.
Those first four words are meant to trick us, I just know it. PLOW looks like it might go with gardening or farming words (maybe including PLOT?) but then I see the TRICKs: RUSE, PLOY, and surely PLOT goes with this group. 🟩
Next the farming tools: SICKLE, PLOW, RAKE, and HOE. 🟨 Then the happy words 🟦 and finally the sound effects 🟪. Another easy one today!
Connections Puzzle #188 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪
I have a full guide to playing Connections, but here’s a refresher on the rules:
First, find the Connections game either on the New York Times website or in their Crossword app. You’ll see a game board with 16 tiles, each with one word or phrase. Your job is to select a group of four tiles that have something in common. Often they are all the same type of thing (for example: RAIN, SLEET, HAIL, and SNOW are all types of wet weather) but sometimes there is wordplay involved (for example, BUCKET, GUEST, TOP TEN, and WISH are all types of lists: bucket list, guest list, and so on).
Select four items and hit the Submit button. If you guessed correctly, the category and color will be revealed. (Yellow is easiest, followed by green, then blue, then purple.) If your guess was incorrect, you’ll get a chance to try again.
You win when you’ve correctly identified all four groups. But if you make four mistakes before you finish, the game ends and the answers are revealed.
The most important thing to know to win Connections is that the groupings are designed to be tricky. Expect to see overlapping groups. For example, one puzzle seemed to include six breakfast foods: BACON, EGG, PANCAKE, OMELET, WAFFLE, and CEREAL. But BACON turned out to be part of a group of painters along with CLOSE, MUNCH, and WHISTLER, and EGG was in a group of things that come by the dozen (along with JUROR, ROSE, and MONTH). So don’t hit “submit” until you’ve confirmed that your group of four contains only those four things.
If you’re stuck, another strategy is to look at the words that seem to have no connection to the others. If all that comes to mind when you see WHISTLER is the painting nicknamed “Whistler’s Mother,” you might be on to something. When I solved that one, I ended up googling whether there was a painter named Close, because Close didn’t fit any of the obvious themes, either.
Another way to win when you’re stuck is, obviously, to read a few helpful hints–which is why we share these pointers every day. Check back tomorrow for the next puzzle!
Source: LifeHacker – Today’s NYT Connections Hints (and Answer) for Saturday, December 16, 2023
Enlarge / A Long March 5 rocket, the largest launcher in China’s inventory, deployed a classified Chinese military satellite into orbit Friday. (credit: CASC)
China’s largest rocket apparently wasn’t big enough to launch the country’s newest spy satellite, so engineers gave the rocket an upgrade.
The Long March 5 launcher flew with a payload fairing some 20 feet (6.2 meters) taller than its usual nose cone when it took off on Friday with a Chinese military spy satellite. This made the Long March 5, with a height of some 200 feet, the tallest rocket China has ever flown.
Adding to the intrigue, the Chinese government claimed the spacecraft aboard the Long March 5 rocket, named Yaogan-41, is a high-altitude optical remote sensing satellite. These types of surveillance satellites usually fly much closer to Earth to obtain the sharpest images possible of an adversary’s military forces and strategically important sites.
Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – A top-secret Chinese spy satellite just launched on a supersized rocket
As I wrote about last week that Intel’s modern Xe kernel graphics driver was nearing submission for the mainline kernel and today it’s indeed been submitted to DRM-Next. The Intel Xe kernel graphics driver is the modern alternative to the long-used i915 DRM kernel driver and is fitted to support Tigerlake graphics and newer — both integrated graphics hardware as well as discrete GPUs/accelerators…
Source: Phoronix – Intel’s New “Xe” Kernel Graphics Driver Submitted Ahead Of Linux 6.8
If you used Apple’s Family Sharing feature with at least one other person and bought a subscription to an app through the App Store between 2015 and 2019, you might just get a settlement of up to $50 from the company. MacRumors reports that Apple will pay $25 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of misleading customers over Family Sharing.
The feature lets up to six family members share app subscriptions with each other but allows individual developers to forbid people from sharing a single subscription if they wish to. The lawsuit, which was filed in 2019, accuses Apple of not being transparent about this and misleading customers by making them think they could share a subscription to every app available in the App Store. “[The] vast majority of subscription-based apps” did support Family Sharing, the lawsuit claims.
The complaint also alleges that Apple placed ads on the landing pages of some subscription-based apps that didn’t support Family Sharing. This led “millions of customers” to download subscription-based apps believing they would be able to access them through their Family Sharing subscription, it says, citing YouTube Red and a puzzle game called Brainwell as examples of apps that didn’t support sharing their subscriptions with family members.
Apple has reportedly denied any wrongdoing and has only agreed to settle the case to avoid the potential costs associated with a jury trial. The company did not respond to a request for comment from Engadget.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-is-settling-a-class-action-lawsuit-over-family-sharing-for-25-million-235208522.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Apple is settling a class action lawsuit over Family Sharing for million
