We’ve seen approximately five minutes of Pokémon Legends: Z-A in motion and fans are already asking a question that has plagued every Pokémon game since the series shifted to 3D graphics with X and Y: Is Pokémon Legends: Z-A ugly? The modern Pokémon games have been universally plagued by technical issues, but the…
“I think we have all the ingredients to win this race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts,” Brin wrote in the Wednesday evening memo. The guidance does not alter Google’s official policy requiring employees to work in-office three days weekly. Brin, who returned to Google following ChatGPT’s 2022 launch, also criticized staff who “put in the bare minimum,” calling them “highly demoralizing to everyone else.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Many Americans are expressing their displeasure with the oligarch.
On the eve of the Oscars, the anti-Academy Awards have crowned (what some might call) the biggest duds of last year.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the next mainline game in Ubisoft’s long-running historical fiction franchise, is nearly here after a few delays, a leak, and a lot of online yelling. And if you were planning to play the game on Steam, well, I’ve got some good news and also, some bad news for Steam Deck owners.
The Bitzee Hamster Ball is all the fun of having a hamster around without the harsh lesson of death.
“Thousands” of complaints about the volume of TV commercials have flooded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in recent years. Despite the FCC requiring TV stations, cable operators, and satellite providers to ensure that commercials don’t bring a sudden spike in decibels, complaints around loud commercials “took a troubling jump” in 2024, the government body said on Thursday.
Under The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, broadcast, cable, and satellite TV providers are required to ensure that commercials “have the same average volume as the programs they accompany,” per the FCC. The FCC’s rules about the volume of commercials took effect in December 2012. The law also requires linear TV providers to use the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s (ATSC’s) recommended practices. The practices include guidance around production, post production, metadata systems usage, and controlling dynamic range. If followed, the recommendations “result in consistency in loudness and avoidance of signal clipping,” per the ATSC [PDF]. The guidance reads:
If all programs and commercials were produced at a consistent average loudness, and if the loudness of the mix is preserved through the production, distribution, and delivery chain, listeners would not be subjected to annoying changes in loudness within and between programs.
As spotted by PC Mag, the FCC claimed this week that The Calm Act initially reduced complaints about commercials aggressively blaring from TVs. However, the agency is seeing an uptick in grievances. The FCC said it received “approximately” 750 complaints in 2022, 825 in 2023, and “at least” 1,700 in 2024 [PDF].
Fubo TV is bringing in more subscribers and revenue but still losing loads of money. Ahead of its proposed Hulu + Live TV merger, the broadcast streaming service increased its subscriber count by about four percent in Q4 2024 and its quarterly revenue by eight percent from a year earlier. And hey, it only lost about $41 million in the quarter, so things aren’t too shabby!
The streaming service ended Q4 with 1.676 million paid subscribers. That’s up from 1.61 million in Q3 and 1.45 million in Q2, so the company is doing something right in attracting new customers. Its total revenue has also grown: nearly $1.59 billion for the year (up 19 percent from 2023) and $433.8 million for the quarter (up eight percent from Q4 2023). Not too shabby!
But Fubo is losing boatloads of money — just less than before. It posted a net loss of nearly $178 million for the year, more than enough to ruin most individuals and small- or medium-sized businesses. But since this is corporate America, things are looking up there, champ! That’s because Fubo improved its losses by over $115 million from a year earlier.
The company is headed for some big changes. Pending shareholder and regulatory approval, Disney will buy a 70 percent stake in the company and merge it with Hulu + Live TV. The deal would create a new entity to manage the two brands, although the plan is for them to continue as separate services (at least at first).
Fubo is arguably the best live TV service for sports, but it still has some notable missing pieces. For starters, you won’t find any Warner Bros. Discovery content. That means subscribers will miss out on a bunch of NBA games (before TNT’s deal with the league expires at the end of the season) and MLB games on TBS.
It also recently increased its prices, with the cheapest plan coming in at $85, slightly more than YouTube TV. Like the traditional cable it’s gunning to replace, live streaming TV is increasingly an expensive hot mess.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/fubo-grows-its-subscribers-and-revenue-as-disney-deal-looms-183344157.html?src=rss
The Google co-founder says 60-hours a week is the productivity sweet spot for AI engineers.
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A lot of folks want to upgrade their homes with a remodel, renovation, or smaller project. But cost is always a factor (and a barrier)—the average renovation cost for a house is over $50,000. Those costs drive a lot of folks to watch way too many home improvement shows and attempt do-it-yourself transformations, but those kinds of DIY projects require money, too—not to mention some basic skills and at least a few tools.
If you’re not someone who’s comfortable swinging a hammer or plugging in a power drill—or someone who doesn’t even own a hammer or a power drill—the idea of upgrading your house might seem impossible unless you’ve got that spare 50 grand. But there are numerous ways you can upgrade your house without the need for any tools whatsoever.
If your bathroom or kitchen needs a place to hang towels and you don’t trust yourself to drill holes, hammer in screw anchors, and drive some screws home, you don’t have to: You can pick up some Command towel racks for both hand towels and bath towels. As you can see in this video, they pop on your walls using the same Command strips you find for hooks and other products (these are water-resistant for obvious reasons). While using a level might make this installation a little easier, you can actually download a bubble level app for your phone that will work in a pinch, or just eyeball it—the good news is that your towel rack will be relatively easy to remove and reset if you mess it up.
There are a lot of options for upgrading the lighting situation in your house that don’t require any wiring, cutting, or wall opening. Lights like these rechargeable LED lights have magnets built in so you can slap them onto metal surfaces for instant, no-tool installation, as well as an adhesive backing so you can attach them under wood cabinets or onto walls. They’re motion-activated, so they can act as nightlights, closet lights, or kitchen work lights. And these stick-on lights are programmable and come with a remote control to make your kitchen feel truly futuristic.
You can also find ceiling lights like this one that adhere to the ceiling without any tools, giving you the ability to add an overhead light to any room without hiring an electrician or drilling into your ceiling.
Need some shelving for light storage? The High & Mighty shelf requires no tools and can hold up to 20 pounds of stuff (there’s also a 25-pound version). It even supplies its own level as part of the installation packaging, so all you have to do is stick the guide to the wall, push the brackets in using just your muscles, and hang the shelf. It’s a super easy way to add some attractive storage to your walls without drilling 1,000 holes.
Is the grout in your shower or kitchen backsplash looking a little dirty? You don’t need a grout saw, float, or even a stiff brush to clean it up or replace it. If the grout’s still in good physical shape, you can brighten it up in no time with a grout pen like this. You can find grout markers in a variety of colors, so you can clean up or transform just about any grout line in your house sans tools. Check the directions before you buy, though—some grout markers only work on unsealed grout, so if your grout has been sealed they may not work properly.
Peel-and-stick stuff has come a long way, and are a powerful way to reinvent any space without the need for tools or extensive renovations. Technically they’re not entirely tool-free, as you will probably need a pair of scissors to size these materials to your space, but since most people possess and know how to use a pair of scissors, I’m allowing it.
Wallpaper is the easiest way to cover up an unattractive wall or just change the look and feel of it. Products like this one are also easily removed, so they’re ideal for rentals or for folks who change their minds a lot—and they can be applied and smoothed using just your hands.
Floor stickers and tiles can upgrade your floors pretty easily. They can be installed on top of just about any flooring (including existing tile), so you don’t need to do any demolition—just cut as needed, peel, and stick. And these tiles come in a wide variety of styles, from faux wood to porcelain to natural stone.
Another option to consider is tile stickers/decals, which are designed to be pasted on top of existing tile to give it a fresh new look. They can be cut to size, and then simply paste over your existing floor or backsplash (you can see it done here).
If you want to add some window treatments without drilling and screwing, it’s pretty easy with shades that use a tension system—you simply insert the rod inside the window opening and let the pressure hold it in place. You can add roller shades, Roman shades, and even heavy curtains to your windows in a snap without any tools required.
If you feel like your bedroom could use a little upgraded classiness, you might think that adding a headboard must require some woodworking and wall attachment—but it doesn’t have to. You can create an illusory headboard on the wall behind your bed by sticking stuff to it. If you have spare wood paneling lying around, grab some Command strips and hang them on the wall. You can also use vinyl peel-and-stick tiles, or literally anything that can be arranged artfully on the wall to create the outline of a headboard without getting any drywall dust on your bed.
It’s a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. February’s list includes dancing sea turtles, the secret to a perfectly boiled egg, the latest breakthrough in deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls, the discovery of an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, and more.
There is growing evidence that certain migratory animal species (turtles, birds, some species of fish) are able to exploit the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation, using it both as a compass to determine direction and as a kind of “map” to track their geographical position while migrating. A paper published in the journal Nature offers evidence of a possible mechanism for this unusual ability, at least in loggerhead sea turtles, who perform an energetic “dance” when they follow magnetic fields to a tasty snack.
Sea turtles make impressive 8,000-mile migrations across oceans and tend to return to the same feeding and nesting sites. The authors believe they achieve this through their ability to remember the magnetic signature of those areas and store them in a mental map. To test that hypothesis, the scientists placed juvenile sea turtles into two large tanks of water outfitted with large coils to create magnetic signatures at specific locations within the tanks. One tank features such a location that had food; the other had a similar location without food.
Sergey Brin co-founded Google in the 1990s along with Larry Page, but both stepped away from the day to day at Google in 2019. However, the AI boom tempted Brin to return to the office, and he thinks everyone should follow his example. In a new internal memo, Brin has advised employees to be in the office every weekday so Google can win the AI race.
Just returning to the office isn’t enough for the Google co-founder. According to the memo seen by The New York Times, Brin says Googlers should try to work 60 hours per week to support the company’s AI efforts. That works out to 12 hours per day, Monday through Friday, which Brin calls the “sweet spot of productivity.” This is not a new opinion for Brin.
Brin, like many in Silicon Valley, is seemingly committed to the dogma that the current trajectory of generative AI will lead to the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Such a thinking machine would be head and shoulders above current AI models, which can only do a good impression of thinking. An AGI would understand concepts and think more like a human being, which some would argue makes it a conscious entity.
“On average, workers are 33% more productive in each hour that they use generative AI,” the paper found. Among respondents that used generative AI in the previous week, 21% said it saved them four hours or more in that week, 20% reported three hours, 26% said two hours and 33% reported an hour or less.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The two spacecraft were designed under low budgets, and the status of both is already in doubt.
Jessica Lee Gagné helmed the latest episode of Severance, making her directorial debut.
Firefox maker Mozilla deleted a promise to never sell its users’ personal data and is trying to assure worried users that its approach to privacy hasn’t fundamentally changed. Until recently, a Firefox FAQ promised that the browser maker never has and never will sell its users’ personal data. An archived version from January 30 says:
Does Firefox sell your personal data?
Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.
That promise is removed from the current version. There’s also a notable change in a data privacy FAQ that used to say, “Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.”
The data privacy FAQ now explains that Mozilla is no longer making blanket promises about not selling data because some legal jurisdictions define “sale” in a very broad way:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently declared his team is “confident we know how to build AGI,” while modifying his personal definition to an AI “system that can tackle increasingly complex problems, at human level, in many fields.” Hassabis suggested industry hype might be financially motivated: “There is a lot of hype for various reasons,” he said, including perhaps “that people need to raise money.” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella separately dismissed AGI milestones as “nonsensical benchmark hacking,” preferring economic impact measurements.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.