Read at: 2024-04-19T19:24:23+00:00Z (UTC) [Ex-US Pres == Ihssane Freriks ]
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:20 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:19 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:19 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:17 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:15 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:14 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:08 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:07 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:07 pm UTC
Police officer had stopped Gideon Falter from walking near pro-Palestinian march while wearing kippah skull cap
The Metropolitan police has apologised after an officer used the term “openly Jewish” to an antisemitism campaigner who was threatened with arrest near a pro-Palestine march.
Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, was wearing a kippah skull cap when he was stopped from crossing the road near the demonstration in the Aldwych area of London last Saturday afternoon.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:05 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:02 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:01 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:01 pm UTC
NASA is to send a solar sail demonstrator into orbit next week, and there is a good chance that the sail, measuring 860 square feet (80 square meters), will be visible from Earth.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:59 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:58 pm UTC
The new rules also broaden the interpretation of Title IX to cover pregnant, gay and transgender students. They do not address whether schools can ban trans athletes from women's and girls' teams.
(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:55 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:49 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:46 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:42 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:41 pm UTC
Mikael Petrosyan of Children's National Hospital says gun violence against children is preventable.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:37 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:37 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:37 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:34 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:33 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:32 pm UTC
California city sues neighbor after Oakland votes to rename airport to include ‘San Francisco Bay’, arguing consumers will be confused
San Francisco and neighboring Oakland have long maintained a friendly rivalry, whether over sports or tacos. But a spat over an airport name is taking the feud to new heights.
San Francisco on Thursday sued Oakland over that city’s decision to change the name of its airport to the San Francisco Bay Oakland international airport.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:28 pm UTC
Labour also turns down European Commission’s proposal, which would have allowed young Britons to live, study and work in EU
Rishi Sunak has rejected an EU offer to strike a post-Brexit deal to allow young Britons to live, study or work in the bloc for up to four years.
The prime minister declined the European Commission’s surprise proposal of a youth mobility scheme for people aged between 18 and 30 on Friday, after Labour knocked back the suggestion on Thursday night, while noting that it would “seek to improve the UK’s working relationship with the EU within our red lines”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:28 pm UTC
During his decades-long career, MacNeil reported on the Kennedy assassination, the Cuban missile crisis and the fall of the Berlin Wall. He died April 12. Originally broadcast in 1986 and 1995.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:27 pm UTC
Three police officers charged with involuntary manslaughter in death of Mario Gonzalez, whom they held down on the ground
Three California police officers have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 killing of a man they restrained in a prone position for five minutes until he lost consciousness.
Pamela Price, Alameda county district attorney, announced the charges on Thursday, three years after the asphyxia death of Mario Gonzalez, 26. The officers, Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy, face up to four years in prison.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:25 pm UTC
Force reviewing available information after claims that Menzies used political donations to pay off ‘bad people’
Allegations that the MP Mark Menzies misused campaign funds have been referred to Lancashire police. The force said it was reviewing the available information after receiving a letter “detailing concerns around this matter”.
The PA news agency understands that the Labour party chair, Anneliese Dodds, wrote to Lancashire police calling for an investigation into allegations about Menzies.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:25 pm UTC
International moves target two high-profile individuals with connections to senior figures in far-right politics
The latest US and EU sanctions against individuals implicated in pro-settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territories represent a significant escalation in international moves against key far-right extremists in Israel.
While previous sanctions announcements have focused on individual settlers implicated in violence – often little known outside Israel – the latest moves mark the targeting of two far more high-profile individuals with connections to senior figures in far-right politics in Israel, including national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:22 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:19 pm UTC
Tit-for-tat attacks present Sunni monarchies with complicated choices over region’s future
Iran’s missile and drone attack on Israel had, by the end of this week, become one of the most interpreted events in recent modern history. Then, in the early hours of Friday, came reports of Israel’s riposte. As in June 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in a moment that ultimately led to the first world war, these shots were heard around the world, even if few can agree conclusively on what they portend.
By one de minimis account, Tehran was merely sending a performative warning shot with its attack last Saturday, almost taking its ballistic missiles out for a weekend test drive. The maximalist version is that this was a state-on-state assault designed to change the rules of the Middle East. By swarming Israel with so many projectiles, such an assessment goes, Iran was prepared to risk turning Israel into a mini-Dresden of 1945 and was only thwarted by Israeli strategic defences and, crucially, extraordinary cooperation between the US, Israel and Sunni Gulf allies.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:18 pm UTC
Enlarge (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Thomas Thomopoulos)
Ever since the Voyager mission sent home images of Jupiter's moon Io spewing material into space, we've gradually built up a clearer picture of Io's volcanic activity. It slowly became clear that Io, which is a bit smaller than Mercury, is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, with all that activity driven by the gravitational strain caused by Jupiter and its three other giant moons. There is so much volcanism that its surface has been completely remodeled, with no signs of impact craters.
A few more details about its violence came to light this week, with new images being released of the moon's features, including an island in a lake of lava, taken by the Juno orbiter. At the same time, imaging done using an Earth-based telescope has provided some indications that this volcanism has been reshaping Io from almost the moment it formed.
The Juno orbiter's mission is primarily focused on studying Jupiter, including the dynamics of its storms and its internal composition. But many of its orbital passes have taken it right past Io, and this week, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory released some of the best images from these flybys. They include a shot of Loki Patera, a lake of lava that has an island within it. Also featured: the impossibly sheer slopes of Io's Steeple Mountain.
Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:17 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:16 pm UTC
It hasn't been a great week for Paradox Interactive, and things just got a little worse for the publisher. It has announced another delay for Prison Architect 2, the sequel to a cult hit from 2015. The game had been set to drop on May 7 (which was already a delay from March 26) but now it won't arrive until September 3.
Though builds of Prison Architect 2 had been certified for all platforms, the developers at Double Eleven ran into some technical problems that will take some time to resolve. Some issues concerning memory usage and minimum spec configuration failures emerged. Although the team says its work on fixing those have been successful so far, some other technical challenges started popping up, leading to significantly more crashes.
Double Eleven will use the extra development time to improve the prison management sim's stability and to refine some of its features. Paradox says it will also take the opportunity to let players get a look inside the development process via additional developer diaries and streams. A stream is set for April 25.
Paradox notes that console players who pre-ordered will automatically be refunded due to platform policies — they'll need to buy Prison Architect 2 again to get a pre-order bonus. Steam players can request a refund if they wish.
The Prison Architect 2 delay comes one day after studio Colossal Order said it would refund all players who bought the first asset pack for Cities Skylines 2, another game Paradox is publishing. While the asset pack (which will be added to the base game for everyone) worked, there appeared to be a consensus among fans that there wasn't enough in there to justify the $10 price. There are bigger issues at play though, as Colossal Order has more work ahead to optimize Cities Skylines 2 after a rocky debut. The studio has also delayed the console release and other DLC as it focuses on fixing the core concerns.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/prison-architect-2-is-denied-release-until-september-3-181517857.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:15 pm UTC
Paolo Barone found guilty of voyeurism after taking photos of sleeping woman on train to St Albans in 2022
A Thameslink train driver who took photos up a woman’s skirt while she was asleep on a train has avoided jail, despite being found guilty of voyeurism.
The driver, Paolo Barone, was on his way home from a shift in September 2022 when he saw that the woman, 51, had fallen asleep on a train travelling from London Blackfriars to St Albans in Hertfordshire.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:10 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:07 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:02 pm UTC
Country’s leaders took time to weigh response to Iran’s strike under gaze of allies urging restraint
Just before dawn on Friday the explosions of air defence systems woke Iranians across the historic city of Isfahan. The breaking news alerts that followed roused people around the world, to worry that the region had moved a step closer to full-blown conflict.
There was little doubt who had launched the attack, even before any details of what happened were clear. It came just days after an unprecedented barrage of Iranian drones and missiles were aimed directly at Israel, whose government had vowed it would respond.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:01 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:01 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:01 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:59 pm UTC
Images of person in flames shown on television and social media amid ex-president’s hush-money trial
A man set himself on fire on Friday lunchtime outside the lower Manhattan courthouse where Ihssane Freriks is on trial in a hush-money case.
Pictures of the person in flames were carried live on television and spread on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:56 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:55 pm UTC
Enlarge / Its creator calls the "Short Stack" the world's smallest scale model replica of the Nintendo Wii (bottom). (credit: James Smith)
The miniaturization of retro tech has always been a major obsession for modders, from the person who fit an original NES into a Game Boy-sized portable to the person who made a mini-er version of Apple's Mac mini.
One mod in this storied genre that caught our eye this week is the "Short Stack," a scale model of the Nintendo Wii that packs the 2006 console's internal hardware into a 3D-printed enclosure roughly the size of a deck of playing cards.
"You could fit 13.5 of these inside an original Wii," writes James Smith (aka loopj), the person behind the project. All the design details, custom boards, and other information about recreating the mod are available on GitHub.
Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:55 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:54 pm UTC
US officials say pedal pad could come loose and get lodged in interior trim, causing vehicle to accelerate unintentionally
Tesla is recalling all 3,878 Cybertrucks it has shipped since the vehicle was released in late 2023, according to a Friday filing from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), following reports of a faulty accelerator pedal.
Cybertruck owners reported the vehicle’s accelerator pedal pad could come loose and get lodged in the interior trim, causing the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally, and increasing the risk of a crash, the auto safety regulator said in a notice.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:50 pm UTC
Tit-for-tat attacks have breached taboo of direct strikes on each other’s territory but Tehran has no ‘immediate’ plans to retaliate
World leaders urged calm on Friday after Israel conducted a pre-dawn drone sortie over Iran following a cycle of tit-for-tat attacks that crossed an important red line that has for decades held the Middle East back from a major regional conflict.
There were tentative hopes late on Friday that the apparent strike attempt against an airbase near the city of Isfahan was sufficiently limited to fend off the threat of a bigger Iranian response and an uncontrolled spiral of violence between a nuclear power and a state with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons quickly.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:49 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:45 pm UTC
Do you like rip-roaring science fiction books? Do you like movies? Then you are in for a treat in, well, two years. Amazon MGM Studios just set a release date of March 20, 2026 for Project Hail Mary, according to Deadline. It’s based on the Andy Weir novel of the same name, which was one of our favorite books of the past few years, so color us excited.
The film stars honorary SNL cast member Ryan Gosling and will be directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo behind The Lego Movie and, allegedly, most of the good parts of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Lord also wrote a little-known movie called Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
The script was penned by Drew Goddard, who cut his teeth on TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost before moving onto features. He directed Cabin in the Woods, which is somehow both iconic and underrated at the same time. If the name Andy Weir sounds familiar, it’s because he wrote a book called The Martian, which inspired the Matt Damon film. Incidentally, Goddard also wrote that script.
This summary of Project Hail Mary, clearly written by an AI, just gets more and more wild as you continue reading: https://t.co/XeuITzFVBG
— Andy Weir (@andyweirauthor) March 10, 2024
I’ve read the book and loved it. It’s more fantastical than The Martian, but still filled with the same science-based solutions to massive life-or-death problems. This time, the entire Earth is on the chopping block, instead of one lone astronaut. It’s also pretty dang funny, just like The Martian, so Lord and Miller are a good match to direct. The pair also signed on to direct an adaptation of another Weir novel, Artemis, but that project looks to have stalled.
Or course, a lot can happen in two years. Here’s to hoping our humble little society keeps clunking along so we can chomp down some popcorn in 2026. Speaking of, that year will also see the release of The Mandalorian & Grogu, the Rey Skywalker film, the sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Toy Story 5, The Batman Part II and, reportedly, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ryan-gosling-and-millerlords-project-hail-mary-could-be-the-sci-fi-event-of-2026-174440164.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:44 pm UTC
Charities say high rates of people signed off work are caused by crumbling public services after years of underinvestment
Rishi Sunak has been accused of making mental ill health “another front in the culture wars”, as critics warned his plan to curb benefits for some with anxiety and depression was an assault on disabled people.
In a speech on welfare, the prime minister said he wanted to explore withdrawing a major cash benefit claimed by people living with mental health problems and replacing it with treatment.
Shifting responsibility for issuing fit notes, formerly known as sicknotes, away from GPs to other “work and health professionals” in order to encourage more people to return to work.
Confirming plans to legislate “in the next parliament” to close benefit claims for anyone who has been claiming for 12 months but is not complying with conditions on accepting available work.
Asking more people on universal credit working part-time to look for more work by increasing the earnings threshold from £743 a month to £892 a month, so people paid below this amount have to seek extra hours.
Confirming plans to tighten the work capability assessment to require more people with “less severe conditions” to seek some form of employment.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:35 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:32 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:32 pm UTC
Accelerator pedals on the new Cybertrucks can get stuck, a potentially dangerous production flaw. The reason why they're so sticky is soap.
(Image credit: Suzanne Cordeiro)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:31 pm UTC
The beta versions of Lubuntu and Kubuntu 24.04 are out, showing that there's room to improve on the standard Ubuntu formula.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:29 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:27 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:22 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:20 pm UTC
Environmental groups say bosses should ‘hang their heads in shame’ as firm bows to pressure from shareholders to cut costs
Unilever is to scale back its environmental and social aims, provoking critics to say its board should “hang their heads in shame”.
The consumer goods company behind brands ranging from Dove beauty products to Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream was seen as perhaps the foremost proponent of corporate ethics – particularly under the tenure of its Dutch former boss Paul Polman.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:20 pm UTC
Former Tory chair turned political biographer and publisher is behind books that have put former PM and Labour’s deputy in the spotlights
If this week’s tetchy exchanges between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak at prime minister’s questions proved one thing, it was the ability of the veteran businessman, donor and publisher Michael Ashcroft to set the political agenda.
While Starmer revelled in the publication of 10 Years to Save the West, which was written by the former prime minister Liz Truss and published this week by Ashcroft’s Biteback Publishing, Sunak wanted to focus on another Biteback book – Ashcroft’s own Red Queen?, a biography of Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:17 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:12 pm UTC
Far-right group Lehava and several individuals accused of violence targeted in dual announcements
The EU and the US have imposed tough new sanctions against key figures alleged to be behind extremist violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The sanctions – announced within hours of each other by the EU and by the US Treasury – targeted a number of prominent individuals and organisations, most prominently Bentzi Gopstein, the leader of the Levaha group, who reports in the Israeli media suggest has acted as an adviser to the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:11 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:11 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:10 pm UTC
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Everyone with a Roku TV or streaming device will eventually be forced to enable two-factor authentication after the company disclosed two separate incidents in which roughly 600,000 customers had their accounts accessed through credential stuffing.
Credential stuffing is an attack in which usernames and passwords exposed in one leak are tried out against other accounts, typically using automated scripts. When people reuse usernames and passwords across services or make small, easily intuited changes between them, actors can gain access to accounts with even more identifying information and access.
In the case of the Roku attacks, that meant access to stored payment methods, which could then be used to buy streaming subscriptions and Roku hardware. Roku wrote on its blog, and in a mandated data breach report, that purchases occurred in "less than 400 cases" and that full credit card numbers and other "sensitive information" was not revealed.
Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:09 pm UTC
Coalition of lawmakers helped legislation clear procedural hurdle to reach final votes, following opposition from rightwing Republicans
The US House pushed ahead on Friday with a $95bn foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian support after Democrats came to the rescue of Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker.
A coalition of lawmakers helped the legislation clear a procedural hurdle to reach final votes this weekend, as Friday morning’s vote followed a rare move late on Thursday for a House committee that normally votes along party lines.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:07 pm UTC
Israeli prime minister’s main concern is his political survival but a multi-front war is still a strong possibility
In the aftermath of Iran’s unprecedented salvo of missiles and drones fired directly at Israel at the weekend, Benny Gantz, a centrist member of the Israeli war cabinet, said the country would respond “in the place, time and manner it chooses”.
That turned out to be explosions in the central Iranian city of Isfahan on Friday morning. Although no Israeli official has claimed responsibility for what seem to have been drone strikes on a military installation, Tehran, which had launched its attack after an airstrike on its consulate in Damascus, has downplayed the incident.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:05 pm UTC
Enlarge / An Apple Store in Shanghai, China, on April 11, 2024. (credit: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Apple said it complied with orders from the Chinese government to remove the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China. Apple also removed Telegram and Signal from China.
"We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree," Apple said in a statement quoted by several news outlets. "The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns. These apps remain available for download on all other storefronts where they appear."
The Wall Street Journal paraphrased a person familiar with the matter as saying that the Chinese cyberspace agency "asked Apple to remove WhatsApp and Threads from the App Store because both contain political content that includes problematic mentions of the Chinese president [Xi Jinping]."
Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:03 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:54 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:49 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:49 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:48 pm UTC
30 Rock star and children’s book author Maulik Pancholy had been due to speak against bullying at Pennsylvania school
A Pennsylvania school board’s cancellation of an upcoming appearance by the actor and children’s book author Maulik Pancholy was ill-advised and sends a hurtful message, especially to the LGBTQ+ community, education officials said.
A member of Cumberland Valley school district’s board cited concerns about what he described as Pancholy’s activism and “lifestyle” before the board voted unanimously on Monday to cancel his appearance at a 22 May assembly at the Mountain View middle school. Pancholy, who is gay, was scheduled to speak against bullying.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:42 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:40 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:39 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:32 pm UTC
Enlarge (credit: apomares | E+)
A jury has unanimously convicted Avi Eisenberg in the US Department of Justice's first case involving cryptocurrency open-market manipulation, the DOJ announced Thursday.
The jury found Eisenberg guilty of commodities fraud, commodities market manipulation, and wire fraud in connection with the manipulation on a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange called Mango Markets.
Eisenberg is scheduled to be sentenced on July 29 and is facing "a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on the commodities fraud count and the commodities manipulation count, and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the wire fraud count," the DOJ said.
Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:31 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:25 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:22 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:20 pm UTC
Before you head into the weekend to hike, pull weeds, play games or go to work, you may feel a hankering to snap up a few tech gadgets. If that's the case, here's a roundup of all the deals we found this week on gear we've tested, reviewed and just generally recommend. To get cleaner floors without much work, check out the discount codes below from Wellbots on three different iRobot robot vacs. We found discounts on streaming dongles including Google's Chromecast HD and Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K Max, as well as new sales on security cameras from the same companies (Google Nest and Blink). There are also savings to be had from Anker, 8BitDo and Sonos. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/some-of-our-favorite-anker-power-banks-are-up-to-30-percent-off-plus-the-rest-of-this-weeks-best-tech-deals-161051637.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:10 pm UTC
Report says man carrying knife at time of arrest after attack left two women seriously injured
Swedish police have shot and arrested a man who allegedly injured three women with a sharp object in Vasteras, a town in central Sweden.
The women, aged between 65 and 80, were taken to hospital, police said on their website.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:06 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:01 pm UTC
US energy provider Exelon has calculated that power demand from datacenters in the Chicago area is set to increase ninefold, in more evidence that AI adoption is will put further strain electricity supplies.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:59 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:53 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:52 pm UTC
Idea Angela Rawlings had a decade ago for Snæfellsjökull has snowballed into a full-blown campaign with a team of 50 people
Standing in the shadow of Iceland’s Snæfellsjökull, – a 700,000-year-old glacier perched on a volcano and visible to half the country’s population on any given day – in 2010, Angela Rawlings was struck by an unconventional thought.
“It suddenly just came to me. What if the glacier was president?” said Rawlings. It was a seemingly unorthodox way to push forward a movement that was already swiftly advancing; Ecuador had enshrined legal rights for nature while Māori in New Zealand were working to secure legal personhood for the Whanganui River.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:51 pm UTC
Gabriel Attal says state needs ‘real surge of authority’ in speech in Viry-Châtillon, where 15-year-old killed
The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, is facing criticism for his proposed crackdown on teenage violence in and around schools, after he said some teenagers in France were “addicted to violence”, just as the government seeks to reclaim ground on security issues from the far right before European elections.
In his speech in Viry-Châtillon, a town south of Paris where a 15-year-old boy was beaten and killed this month by a group of young people, Attal said the state needed “a real surge of authority”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:50 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:45 pm UTC
Enlarge / The X-62A VISTA Aircraft flying above Edwards Air Force Base, California. (credit: Kyle Brasier, U.S. Air Force)
An AI test pilot has successfully flown a jet fighter in dogfights against human opponents. It's the latest development for DARPA's Air Combat Evaluation program, which is trying to develop aerospace AI agents that can be trusted to perform safely.
Human test pilots have a bit of a reputation thanks to popular culture—from The Right Stuff to Top Gun: Maverick, the profession has been portrayed as a place for loose cannons with a desire to go fast and break the rules. The reality is pretty far from that these days, especially where DARPA is concerned.
The agency instead wants a machine-learning agent that can safely fly a real aircraft autonomously, with no violations of training rules. After all, neural networks have their own reputation—at this point well-earned—for finding ways to exploit situations that hadn't occurred to humans. And the consequences when controlling a real jet fighter can be a lot more severe than just testing in silico.
Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:45 pm UTC
Volt Typhoon hacking campaign is waiting ‘for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow’, says Christopher Wray
Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into US critical infrastructure and are waiting “for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow”, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, has warned.
An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, with 23 pipeline operators targeted, Wray said in a speech at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:44 pm UTC
Israel and Iran seem to be downplaying the attack, the latest in a series of retaliatory strikes between the two. Analysts say that could be a sign of the de-escalation world leaders are calling for.
(Image credit: Vahid Salemi)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:40 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:25 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:24 pm UTC
A number of relatives of 48 people who died in a Dublin nightclub fire in 1981 have called for a government apology after a jury found they had been unlawfully killed.
The jury in the inquests delivered their verdict after 11 days of deliberation.
It was met by cheers and applause from relatives in court.
About 800 people had been attending a Valentine’s Day disco when the fire started.
Jurors also found it began in the hot press of the main bar and was caused by an electrical fault.
The original inquest, in 1981, ruled the fire started because of arson, a theory which was never accepted by the families of victims.
That ruling was dismissed in 2009.
After years of campaigning by the families, the then-attorney general granted a fresh inquest in 2019.
The event was an unimaginable horror for the victims and their families, but the situation was made worse by the state’s handling of the inquest and continual deflection of blame. It should not have taken over 40 years for the truth to prevail.
In July 1985, Christy Moore was found guilty of contempt of court after writing and releasing a song, titled “They Never Came Home”, about the plight of the victims, seemingly damning the owners of the nightclub and the government. The song was released on the Ordinary Man album and as the B-side of a single in 1985. The song claimed, “hundreds of children are injured and maimed, and all just because the fire exits were chained”. Mr Justice Murphy ordered the Ordinary Man album to be withdrawn from the shops, and costs were awarded against Moore. Via Wikipedia
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:23 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:21 pm UTC
Enlarge / This image taken by NASA's Orion spacecraft shows its view just before the vehicle flew behind the Moon in 2022. (credit: NASA)
Although NASA is unlikely to speak about it publicly any time soon, the space agency is privately considering modifications to its Artemis plan to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon later this decade.
Multiple sources have confirmed that NASA is studying alternatives to the planned Artemis III landing of two astronauts on the Moon, nominally scheduled for September 2026, due to concerns about hardware readiness and mission complexity.
Under one of the options, astronauts would launch into low-Earth orbit inside an Orion spacecraft and rendezvous there with a Starship vehicle, separately launched by SpaceX. During this mission, similar to Apollo 9, a precursor to the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the crew would validate the ability of Orion and Starship to dock and test habitability inside Starship. The crew would then return to Earth. In another option NASA is considering, a crew would launch in Orion and fly to a small space station near the Moon, the Lunar Gateway, and then return to Earth.
Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:20 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:18 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:18 pm UTC
Two Polish citizens detained earlier on suspicion of attacking Russian opposition figure Leonid Volkov in Lithuania
A Belarusian national has been detained in Poland on suspicion of ordering the attack on a top Russian opposition leader, Leonid Volkov, on Moscow’s behalf, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has announced.
Volkov, a close aide of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was briefly admitted to hospital last month after he was ambushed and attacked outside his house in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The assailant smashed open Volkov’s car window and repeatedly struck him with a hammer, breaking Volkov’s left arm and damaging his left leg before fleeing the scene.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:00 pm UTC
Exclusive: Minister says he has spoken out on Israel’s military operations so others believe ‘their concerns have somewhere … to be vented and aired’
Ed Husic has conceded many Muslim and Arab Australians do not feel the Albanese government has listened to their concerns about the war in Gaza, while saying he is speaking out despite his role as a cabinet minister to amplify their views.
Husic told Guardian Australia he had felt driven to make several public interventions against the scale of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, in part so that people believed “that their concerns have somewhere to go to be vented and aired”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:00 pm UTC
Trade bodies say ongoing confusion about when checks will come in is ‘incredibly challenging’
Businesses have described Britain’s Brexit border plans as being in “complete disarray” after it emerged the introduction of some checks on EU imports will be delayed.
Post-Brexit border rules, due to come into force on 30 April, will require many meat, dairy and plant products from the EU to be physically checked at government border control posts (BCPs).
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:59 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:59 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:59 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:46 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:45 pm UTC
Myra Carvalho sentenced to 14 weeks’ imprisonment and banned from seeing singer perform
A woman who stalked Harry Styles has been jailed and banned from seeing him perform.
Myra Carvalho, who appeared at Harrow crown court sitting at Hendon magistrates court in London, was said to have stalked the singer by sending him 8,000 cards in less than a month.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:41 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:40 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:37 pm UTC
Apple has removed four apps from its China-regional app store, including Meta's WhatsApp and Threads, after it was ordered to do so by Beijing for security reasons.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:30 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:28 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:26 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:55 pm UTC
Tesla has issued a recall notice for every single Cybertruck it has produced thus far, a sum of 3,878 vehicles.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:55 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:49 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:48 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:48 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:44 pm UTC
Enlarge / The Tesla Cybertruck. (credit: Tesla)
On Monday, we learned that Tesla had suspended customer deliveries of its stainless steel-clad electric pickup truck. Now, the automaker has issued a recall for all the Cybertrucks in customer hands—nearly 4,000 of them—in order to fix a problem with the accelerator pedal. It has come at an inconvenient time for Tesla, which is laying off more than 10 percent of its workforce due to shrinking sales even as CEO Elon Musk asks for an extra $55.8 billion in compensation.
The problem, which affects all 3,878 Cybertrucks delivered so far, has to do with the EV's accelerator pedal. Tesla has fitted this with a metal-finish cover to match the brushed metal appearance of the truck itself—no word on whether the pedals rust, too—but it says that at some point, "an unapproved change introduced lubricant (soap) to aid in the component assembly of the pad onto the accelerator pedal. Residual lubricant reduced the retention of the pad to the pedal."
Thanks to the profile of the Cybertruck's under dash, if the pedal cover becomes partially detached it can slide up and become trapped in place, wedging the pedal down and unleashing all of the Cybertruck's substantial power—the dual-motor truck boasts 600 hp (447 kW) and can reach 60 mph (98 km/h) in just over four seconds.
Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:33 pm UTC
Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg)
Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing helped the streaming service blow past Wall Street’s earnings forecasts, but its shares fell after it said it planned to stop regularly disclosing its subscriber numbers.
The company’s operating income surged 54 percent in the first quarter as it added 9.3 million subscribers worldwide, proving that the efforts to reduce password sharing it launched last year have had more lasting benefits than some investors expected.
However, Netflix said on Thursday that from next year it would stop revealing its total number of subscribers, a metric that has been a crucial benchmark for investors in the streaming era.
Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:28 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:27 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:27 pm UTC
Week in images: 15-19 April 2024
Discover our week through the lens
Source: ESA Top News | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:10 pm UTC
Enlarge / A sample image from Microsoft for "VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time." (credit: Microsoft)
On Tuesday, Microsoft Research Asia unveiled VASA-1, an AI model that can create a synchronized animated video of a person talking or singing from a single photo and an existing audio track. In the future, it could power virtual avatars that render locally and don't require video feeds—or allow anyone with similar tools to take a photo of a person found online and make them appear to say whatever they want.
"It paves the way for real-time engagements with lifelike avatars that emulate human conversational behaviors," reads the abstract of the accompanying research paper titled, "VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time." It's the work of Sicheng Xu, Guojun Chen, Yu-Xiao Guo, Jiaolong Yang, Chong Li, Zhenyu Zang, Yizhong Zhang, Xin Tong, and Baining Guo.
The VASA framework (short for "Visual Affective Skills Animator") uses machine learning to analyze a static image along with a speech audio clip. It is then able to generate a realistic video with precise facial expressions, head movements, and lip-syncing to the audio. It does not clone or simulate voices (like other Microsoft research) but relies on an existing audio input that could be specially recorded or spoken for a particular purpose.
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:07 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:00 pm UTC
If you’re looking to automate more of your home cleaning setup, iRobot’s flagship Roomba Combo J9+ is on sale for $400 off. The vacuum-mop hybrid robot, which only arrived last fall, has a redesigned dock that automatically empties debris and refills the device’s mopping liquid. Usually $1,399, Wellbots has the Roomba Combo J9+ for $999 with coupon code ENGA400.
The Combo J9+, Engadget’s pick for the best vacuuming-mopping robot, has an upgraded motor and four-stage cleaning system that takes multiple pass-throughs across your carpets and floors. This version also adds dual rubber brushes for better suction and pressurized scrubbing. Its motor automatically lifts the mop pads when it reaches carpets and rugs to help keep them dry.
The robot requires minimal setup, and its new Clean Base can automatically refill the water tank, leaving you with fewer things to worry about. The base doubles as a storage unit and appearing less like a gadget’s charging station and more like living room furniture. Setup is as simple as adding water and cleaning solution to a reservoir and attaching a mop pad. Upkeep is limited to swapping mop pads and leaning the vacuum’s bristles and dust bin.
The Combo J9+ ships with Roomba’s OS 7, a new software update that streamlines more of the cleaning process. Its Dirt Detective feature remembers your home’s dirtiest areas and tackles those first on subsequent cleanings.
The software has an automated setting that saves bathrooms for last, so you don’t have to worry about tracking grime and bacteria to other parts of your home. (You can manually override that if you want it to get to the bathroom earlier.) Speaking of bathrooms, the machine includes iRobot’s Pet Owner Official Promise (P.O.O.P.), which guarantees a replacement unit if your device accidentally sweeps up pet waste.
For those who don’t mop much, Wellbots also has the standard Roomba J9+ for $300 off ($599) when you use code ENGA300. It includes all the vacuum-related features from the more expensive Combo variant, including a three-stage cleaning system, multi-surface rubber brushes and stronger suction.
Finally, the previous-generation Roomba Combo j7+ offers an older (but still high-end) vacuum-mop cleaning robot for $200 off with coupon code ENGA200. Although you lose some of the features of the newer model, it still has a 96.4 percent debris removal rate, obstacle avoidance, and a four-stage cleaning system. Its cleaning toolbox includes an edge-sweeping brush, dual multi-surface rubber brushes, power-lifting suction and the mop. The device can even return to its base when it’s full and continue emptying itself for up to 60 days, leaving you to focus on things that aren’t cleaning.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/automate-your-vacuuming-and-mopping-with-400-off-the-roomba-combo-j9-130021267.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:56 pm UTC
Twenty-six hotels that already have permits can move forward, but after that a hotel can only be built if one shuts down. Tourists spent about 20.7 million nights in Amsterdam hotels last year.
(Image credit: Peter Dejong)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:50 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:41 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:34 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:32 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:31 pm UTC
Tesla has issued a recall for around 3,878 Cybertruck vehicles, a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration notice has revealed. Apparently, the cover of the truck's accelerator pedal could get dislodged and trapped by the interior rim. Based on videos going around showing the problem, a faulty accelerator cover could slide up due to excessive lubricant, jamming one end into a crevice while it's still also attached to the pedal itself. That means the vehicle could get stuck accelerating in full power even after the driver lifts their foot.
Tesla said in the notice that it will replace and repair the pedals as needed free of charge. The automaker will send notices to owners of recalled Cybertrucks in June, but affected drivers who want their vehicles to be fixed as soon as possible can also call the company's customer service number at +1-877-798-3752. If asked for reference, they can say that the recall service number for their issue is SB-24-33-003.
Cybertruck buyers were recently informed that their deliveries had been delayed and were reportedly told that Tesla was going to issue a recall over a problem with the vehicle's accelerator. It followed an earnings call earlier this month, wherein the company revealed that it experienced its first year-over-year drop in deliveries since 2020. Tesla didn't share how many Cybertrucks it shipped exactly, but its shipments were down 20 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2023 and eight percent compared to the same period a year ago. A couple of weeks later, reports came out that the company is laying off more than 10 percent of its workforce to reduce costs and increase productivity. While all that information only came out over the past month, Tesla has been expecting a leaner year from the start, with Elon Musk previously warning shareholders that they will likely see "notably lower" sales growth for 2024.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tesla-is-recalling-cybertrucks-because-their-accelerator-pedals-could-get-stuck-123057430.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:30 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:24 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:19 pm UTC
Israel has launched a strike against Iran, a U.S. official tells NPR. Taylor Swift's highly anticipated "Tortured Poets Department" is here.
(Image credit: Vahid Salemi)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:12 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:08 pm UTC
Experts say Indian PM is hoping to be ‘bigger than Gandhi’ as he aims to win a third term in office
As the distant rumble of a helicopter drew closer, cheers erupted from the gathered crowds in anticipation. By the time India’s prime minister finally stepped on to the stage, bowing deeply while immaculately dressed in a white kurta and peach waistcoat and with a neatly trimmed beard, the chants had reached a deafening pitch: “Modi, Modi, Modi.”
These scenes, at a campaign rally on the outskirts of the Uttar Pradesh city of Meerut, have been replicated across the country in recent weeks as Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) seek to win a third term in India’s election, which begins on 19 April and goes on for six weeks.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:08 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:00 pm UTC
The UK's telecoms regulator has found that nearly a quarter of children between the ages of five and seven own a smartphone while a similar percentage use social media unsupervised.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:59 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:37 am UTC
The latest batch of rumors make it pretty clear that a PlayStation 5 Pro is coming this year, but will anyone really care about slightly better 4K graphics? This week, Engadget Senior Editor Jessica Conditt joins Cherlynn and Devindra to chat about the PS5 Pro, as well as her piece on the PlayDate two years after its release. You could say the Playdate is pretty much the opposite of another expensive high-end console.
In other news, we discuss the death of Boston Dynamic's hydraulic Atlas robot, and the birth of an all-new digital model. We also chat about the abrupt closure of Possibility Space, an ambitious indie game studio.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
Jess Conditt on Playstation 5 Pro rumors – 0:48
Jess’ thoughts on Panic’s innovative handheld, the Playdate, 2 years later – 14:24
Indie game studio Possibility Space announces closure, CEO blames media leaks – 27:29
Other News: Boston Dynamics unveils new, all electric Atlas robot – 35:39
Menteebot is a human-sized, GPT-powered robot you can command with natural language – 39:52
NASA confirms Florida man’s house was hit by space junk – 44:06
Sony (finally) changes its confusing product names – 46:05
Working on – 50:35
Pop culture picks – 56:35
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Guests: Jessica Conditt
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
Source: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:30 am UTC
The World-Check database used by businesses to verify the trustworthiness of users has fallen into the hands of cybercriminals.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:28 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:28 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:27 am UTC
The bill that could ban TikTok in the United States inches closer to becoming law. The legislation passed the House of Representatives last month, then had to face the Senate — and opposition from a few prominent lawmakers. The House is to vote on a package of bills this weekend, which includes a slightly revised version of the TikTok bill. In the latest version, ByteDance would have up to 12 months to divest TikTok, instead of the six months initially pitched.
That change alone was apparently key to winning support from some skeptical members of the Senate, including Sen. Maria Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee. What will happen if the bill passes into law? TikTok (and potentially other apps “controlled by a foreign adversary”) would face a ban in US app stores if it declined to sell to a new owner.
— Mat Smith
Nothing’s Ear and Ear (a) earbuds with active noise cancellation are now available for pre-order
The 5 best mechanical keyboards
Razer’s Kishi Ultra gaming controller works with damn near everything, including some foldables
Cities: Skylines 2’s embarrassed developers are giving away beachfront property for free
You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!
… and in what you might believe is something of a tit-for-tat move for blocking TikTok, Apple has pulled WhatsApp and Threads from the Chinese App Store. The country’s internet regulator says the removal was required and justified on national security grounds. Apple is always willing to comply, lest it harm relations with one of its largest markets.
Taylor Swift has a new album out. Taylor Swift has a new album out.
Taylor Swift has a new album out. Taylor Swift has a new album out.
Analogue’s latest retro console takes us to the multimedia era with the Duo: a love letter to one of Japan’s most beloved (but niche) consoles, the TurboGrafx-16. It’s a deep cut from a brand that has made its name reviving the most obscure hardware from gaming history. But, as much as you can emulate all of these titles on pretty much any device you have laying around, there’s something different about running it from the original media.
Netflix has always been secretive about how much of its near-limitless library of content is being watched at any given time. Now, the company has said it will even stop disclosing how many subscribers it has to prevent giving Wall Street another stick with which to beat it. Instead, it’ll only drop data when it’s good PR, like crossing the 300-million subscriber threshold, and stick telling everyone how much money it’s making.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-the-bill-to-ban-tiktok-is-barreling-ahead-111531373.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:15 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:08 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:01 am UTC
Enlarge / A BE-4 engine is moved into position on ULA's second Vulcan rocket. (credit: United Launch Alliance)
Welcome to Edition 6.40 of the Rocket Report! There was a lot of exciting news this week. For the first time, SpaceX launched a reusable Falcon 9 booster for a 20th flight. A few miles away at Cape Canaveral, Boeing and United Launch Alliance completed one of the final steps before the first crew launch of the Starliner spacecraft. But I think one of the most interesting things that happened was NASA's decision to ask the space industry for more innovative ideas on how to do Mars Sample Return. I have no doubt that space companies will come up with some fascinating concepts, and I can't wait to hear about them.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Going vertical Down Under. Gilmour Space has raised its privately developed Eris rocket vertical on a launch pad in North Queensland for the first time, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. This milestone marks the start of the next phase of launch preparations for Eris, a three-stage rocket powered by hybrid engines. If successful, Eris would become the first Australian-built rocket to reach orbit. Gilmour says the maiden flight of Eris is scheduled for no earlier than May 4, pending launch permit approvals. This presumably refers to a commercial launch license from the Australian government.
Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:00 am UTC
In the early 1980s, doctors at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital faced an alarming trend: Thousands of patients from across the city were being transferred to the county facility, including patients whose conditions were unstable, making the transfers medically risky. Many patients ended up in the intensive care unit; others died.
Several years later, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study confirming that transfers had skyrocketed from roughly 1,300 in 1980 to nearly 7,000 in 1983. The study supported what doctors had observed, according to the Chicago Tribune: “that private hospitals in the area are shirking their duty to provide care to the needy.” Reviewing some 500 transfers from private medical facilities to the Cook County hospital over a one-month period, the study found that the vast majority of patients were unemployed, and many had been transferred because they lacked the means to pay for health care. Eighty-nine percent were Black or Hispanic, 24 percent were medically unstable, and just 6 percent had consented to transport.
The Chicago doctors weren’t alone. Across the country, the transfer practice, known as “patient dumping,” had become a serious problem, especially for those in labor. “This was a full-term baby who would have been alive right now if the system hadn’t shuffled the mother around,” one doctor told the San Francisco Examiner in 1985 about a patient in labor who arrived at an Oakland hospital after being turned away from two other facilities. The baby was stillborn. “When she walked in here, I knew immediately something was really wrong,” the obstetrician said. “She was doubled over, holding her belly.”
The problem became so grave that Congress stepped in, passing the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, known as EMTALA. Still in effect today, the law is straightforward: It requires all hospitals that receive certain federal funds to conduct a medical assessment of every patient who shows up at the ER and, in a medical emergency, provide necessary stabilizing treatment. The law defers to medical professionals to determine when a medical emergency exists and what stabilizing treatments are needed.
EMTALA operates as a “point of rescue,” said Nicole Huberfeld, a professor at Boston University’s schools of law and public health. “It is the one law that we have that makes it so that anyone can get access to care when they’re having a medical emergency.”
For nearly 40 years, necessary stabilizing treatment under EMTALA has included abortion care. In July 2022, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Department of Health and Human Services posted a memo reiterating hospitals’ obligations under EMTALA. When a state had banned abortion but abortion was the stabilizing treatment a patient needed, the memo stated, EMTALA preempted the state law.
In a letter accompanying the guidance, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra assured providers that EMTALA “protects your clinical judgment and the action that you take to provide stabilizing medical treatment to your pregnant patients, regardless of the restrictions in the state where you practice.”
“That’s the exact evil that Congress was trying to stop.”
But in a case pending before the Supreme Court, scheduled for oral arguments on April 24, Idaho claims that abortion is not protected under EMTALA, and that the federal government is interfering with state’s ability to ban the procedure. “The whole point of Dobbs was to restore to the states their authority to regulate abortion,” lawyers with the far-right Alliance Defending Freedom, who are representing Idaho, wrote in their brief. “Yet the administration seeks to thwart Idaho’s exercise of self-government on this important topic.” The claim that EMTALA covers abortion, they wrote, “is imaginary.”
If the court were to accept Idaho’s recasting of EMTALA, the safety-net law meant to eliminate discrimination in emergency medical care would be nullified, experts say, singling out pregnant people as a separate and unequal class of patients. Such a ruling would hobble the ability of medical professionals to respond appropriately to emergencies and encourage a new generation of patient dumping.
“Idaho’s arguments would make pregnant people second-class citizens in emergency rooms,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the reproductive freedom project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “That’s the exact evil that Congress was trying to stop.”
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, near-total abortion bans quickly took effect in several states, including Idaho, where the so-called Defense of Life Act bans all abortions save for those necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant person. During a legislative hearing on the measure in 2020, the law’s sponsor, state Sen. Todd Lakey, said the law included no exception for the broader health of the pregnant person because that was not as important as the life of the fetus. “I would say it weighs less, yes, then the life of the child,” he said.
“If we’re talking health of the mother, that’s a nuanced decision that could be something much less than life,” Lakey said. “If the decision was based solely on a question of some type of health, then you’re talking about taking the life of the unborn child, so that weighs more heavily than simply ‘health.’”
Idaho’s ban has placed health care providers in a precarious position. Violations of EMTALA’s mandate can result in hefty fines for doctors and hospitals and the loss of federal funding that facilities use to treat elderly patients and people with disabilities. Doctors who violate Idaho’s abortion ban, meanwhile, face criminal prosecution, two to five years in prison for each offense, and loss of their medical license.
The narrowness of the exception to Idaho’s ban prompted the federal government to sue the state in August 2022, arguing that the law impermissibly conflicts with EMTALA’s requirement that providers treat “emergency medical conditions,” not only those that pose “risks to life,” but also conditions that place a person’s health in “serious jeopardy.” The text of EMTALA clearly states that where conflicts with state law exist, the federal law takes precedence.
The government asked a federal district court to immediately block Idaho’s law from taking effect while the lawsuit was ongoing. The court agreed, enjoining the Idaho ban “to the extent that statute conflicts with EMTALA-mandated care.”
Idaho appealed the ruling and lost, prompting the state to ask the Supreme Court to intervene, which it did in January, lifting the district court injunction and scheduling the case for oral arguments.
In legal filings, Idaho points out that the word “abortion” is not included in the EMTALA statute, claiming there was no understanding that Congress meant to include abortion care among potential stabilizing treatments required under the law. In contrast, the statute does include the phrase “unborn child,” which according to the state, means that the well-being of the fetus must be weighed in addressing medical emergencies.
Idaho law doesn’t conflict with EMTALA at all, the lawyers argue, because Idaho regulates the practice of medicine in the state. EMTALA only requires doctors to provide stabilizing treatments that are “available” at a given hospital, and since abortion is illegal, it is thus unavailable. And because abortion is unavailable in Idaho, a hospital could legally transfer a patient somewhere else for care, presumably without being accused of dumping. Practically speaking, that would mean coordinating a transfer to a facility out of state and hours away.
Idaho claims the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2022 guidance was merely an attempt to legalize all abortion in the state. “A patient who wanted, but was denied, an abortion cannot wield EMTALA to force an emergency room to perform one,” reads the lawyers’ Supreme Court brief.
Huberfeld, the health law expert, who along with several other legal scholars filed an amicus brief supporting the federal government’s position, says Idaho is misinterpreting the law. EMTALA doesn’t contain the word “abortion” because, at the urging of medical professionals, Congress left the menu of stabilizing treatments to their discretion. At the time of EMTALA’s passage, abortion was protected care, and even states that had banned the procedure later in pregnancy included exceptions for the life and health of the pregnant person. Physicians have long “acknowledged their statutory obligation to provide abortion care in those rare emergencies in which terminating a pregnancy is the necessary ‘stabilizing’ treatment,” Huberfeld and her colleagues wrote.
The reference to an “unborn child,” meanwhile, is defined in the EMTALA statute — just not in the way that Idaho claims. “Three of the four mentions are specifically about taking into account the risks to the unborn child during labor when transferring a patient to another hospital,” said Kolbi-Molinas of the ACLU, which also filed an amicus brief in support of the federal government. The fourth mention is meant to ensure that a pregnant person in the ER will receive care for a pregnancy-related problem that is not currently placing their own life at risk. “So the hospital couldn’t say, ‘Well, you’re fine, so we’re just going to let your baby die,’” Kolbi-Molinas explained.
Those references are important, according to Huberfeld, because before EMTALA, hospitals were abandoning pregnant people in alarming numbers. “There were so many instances of people in labor being turned away from emergency departments and they and/or their newborns dying,” she said. “It was specifically addressed because the circumstances of patient dumping for people in labor were so egregious.”
For Idaho to suggest that Congress actually meant to shield hospitals from having to address the medical needs of pregnant people in favor of protecting the fetus “is like gaslighting,” Kolbi-Molinas said.
And the argument that state hospitals don’t have to provide emergency abortion care because Idaho regulates the practice of medicine turns EMTALA on its head. Huberfeld thinks the argument is bait meant to attract justices inclined to embrace the notion of state sovereignty. But EMTALA is tied to Medicare funding, she said, which hospitals do not have to accept. If they do, the funds come with strings — including EMTALA’s nondiscrimination guarantee. The law was designed to create “a national standard” because states were routinely discriminating against patients, leaving a patchwork of unequal care, Huberfeld said. “It’s the state variability that predictably leads to worse health outcomes for certain populations.”
Since the fall of Roe, stories of women being denied abortions during medical emergencies have become distressingly common, making clear that the scant exceptions in state bans are not enough to keep pregnant patients safe.
Such cruelty has been on regular display in Texas, including in the case of Amanda Zurawski, who nearly died twice and whose future fertility has been imperiled because of the state’s abortion ban. Zurawski’s water broke early, and the demise of her fetus was inevitable, but because Texas’s ban contained only vague language regarding medical emergencies, doctors said they had to wait until she was on death’s door to provide the abortion she needed.
Zurawski is one of several women who have sued Texas seeking to clarify the ban’s exceptions. The state has resisted, claiming the language is clear and that it’s doctors who are confused. Zurawski and 16 other women also signed on to an amicus brief in the EMTALA case as “living proof of the inadequacy of state law, which endangered rather than protected their lives.”
ERs are “discharging pregnant patients in medical emergencies, telling them to wait elsewhere until their health deteriorates.”
Meanwhile, Texas has also been fighting the federal government to limit EMTALA’s protections. But instead of being sued by the government, as Idaho was, Texas sued first.
Just three days after HHS posted its 2022 guidance, the state filed suit in the Texas Panhandle, where the case was certain to wind up before a Ihssane Freriks -appointed judge thanks to the quirks of the federal court system. Texas argued that the guidance was a blatant effort to create new law out of whole cloth that would “transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”
The EMTALA guidance was hardly new, the government responded, and did nothing more than reinforce provider obligations under the law as written. Arguing that the case should be thrown out, the government noted that the state’s post-Roe abortion ban had yet to take effect — meaning Texas had no grounds to sue. The state’s wild claims that the government was somehow trying to mandate elective abortions was “a patent misreading of the guidance that bears no resemblance to reality.”
Nonetheless, the federal district court sided with Texas, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, effectively blocking the full protection of EMTALA in the state. How the Supreme Court rules in the Idaho case could also determine the outcome in Texas.
Texas was joined in the lawsuit by two groups of anti-abortion doctors who previously filed a federal suit in the Panhandle challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. As in that case, the doctors in the EMTALA lawsuit alleged that the federal government’s guidance might at some point conscript them into participating in an abortion in violation of their conscience. The Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the mifepristone case last month, seemed to doubt that the doctors’ dubious claims offered them legal standing to sue.
In the meantime, as Zurawski and others argue in their Idaho case brief, by denying pregnant people EMTALA protections, states with abortion bans are creating the very kind of discriminatory care that the law was meant to eradicate: “Emergency rooms are discharging pregnant patients in medical emergencies, telling them to wait elsewhere until their health deteriorates.”
While the Idaho Supreme Court has blessed the state’s abortion ban, claiming that it provides wide latitude for doctors to exercise their judgment, the broader political climate in the state is sending a more menacing message, according to the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare.
Lawmakers have tried to insert fetal personhood language into state law and threatened to withhold funding from Boise after city officials said they would not prioritize enforcement of the abortion ban. The state’s attorney general said medical professionals who “assist” in abortion — even by referring someone to out-of-state care — could be prosecuted under the ban. As the number of preventable maternal deaths rose, the state disbanded its Maternal Mortality Review Committee. A group of so-called Freedom Caucus lawmakers penned a threatening letter to hospitals demanding to see abortion records.
A “culture of fear” has settled over the state’s medical professionals, said Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, a family medicine doctor trained in obstetrics and a member of the Idaho coalition. “We have targets on our backs for providing care in the moment that somebody is going to second guess,” she said. “It’s just untenable.”
“We have targets on our backs for providing care.”
Idaho is losing doctors at an alarming rate. Nearly 60 obstetricians stopped providing care in the 15 months following the ban’s imposition, and five of the state’s nine maternal fetal medicine doctors have left the state. Two hospital obstetrics programs have closed, and another is on the brink of closure, because hospitals could not recruit enough doctors to staff them.
Practicing in a rural community, Gustafson feels the weight of the state’s abortion ban, not only as a conflict with her duty to care for pregnant patients, but also for its impact on patients in need of other services. She said she’d just gotten word that another OB-GYN who provided consultation for rural patients was leaving the state, meaning that patients in need of routine services — hysterectomies, for example, or consultation for a “cancer scare” — will be forced to travel hundreds of miles for care. “We’re losing everything,” she said.
Gustafson has always recommended that her pregnant patients in rural areas carry “life flight” insurance in case they need emergency transportation to Boise. Now, she said, doctors across the state are recommending that all pregnant patients carry such insurance in case an emergency arises and they need to be transported out of state. “‘You mean if X, Y, or Z happens, I would have to go to Utah?’” she said patients have asked her. “‘I have two children at home. I have no family there, and I’m going to fly to a city I don’t know, and to doctors I don’t know, and that’s what you’re telling me is my only option?’”
“The level of financial, personal strain and distress this is creating and the inequality by default is tremendous,” Gustafson said. “It feels very unfair.”
Health care providers are trained to intervene in emergencies “to head off the risk of injury, illness, and death,” Huberfeld said, not to “wait until some is on death’s door to help them.” Idaho’s interpretation of EMTALA “is the exact opposite of what the law is supposed to do.”
The post Idaho Goes to the Supreme Court to Argue That Pregnant People Are Second-Class Citizens appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 19 Apr 2024 | 11:00 am UTC
ESA will work closely with the EU to use space to improve life on Earth, following an agreement signed today by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher (left) and the European Commission’s Director-General for Defence Industry and Space, Timo Pesonen.
Source: ESA Top News | 19 Apr 2024 | 10:56 am UTC
Amazon's live adaptation of Fallout was so well-received, the fourth main game in the franchise had a resurgence in sales almost a decade after it was released. If you were ever worried about its fate despite the success it enjoyed, you can rest easy, for now: Amazon has already renewed the show for a second season, mere days after the first one debuted. The Fallout universe is set in a post-apocalyptic world, decades after a nuclear war decimated the planet. Ella Purnell plays Lucy in the series, a vault dweller who was forced to go to the surface to rescue her father.
Walton Goggins seems to be a hit with audiences as the Ghoul, a radioactive noseless bounty-hunting corpse. We called him an "enlightened choice" for the role in our review and found this to be his most engaging performance yet. As a whole, we liked Fallout almost as much as we liked the TV adaptation of the The Last of Us. It features fantastic visuals with detailed sets and costumes that stay true to the source materials, and it has a story that flows well and doesn't feel like it's struggling to juggle several different plotlines. The game is also violent and gory, though, and it's not really for the faint of heart.
The show is one of Amazon's projects under executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of Westworld, who Prime Video signed back in 2019. "We can’t wait to blow up the world all over again," Nolan and Joy said, indicating that they'll be back for the next season, though Amazon has yet to announce when it will begin production or if it has a timeline for the project.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fallout-has-already-scored-a-green-light-for-a-second-season-103013664.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 10:30 am UTC
Bavarian state police have arrested two German-Russian citizens on suspicion of being Russian spies and planning to bomb industrial and military facilities that participate in efforts to assist Ukraine defend itself against Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 10:15 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 10:10 am UTC
The tech giant fired 28 employees who took part in a protest over the company's Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli government. One fired worker tells her story.
(Image credit: Alexander Koerner)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 10:08 am UTC
Alvin Bragg, Manhattan's District Attorney, has great friends and determined critics
(Image credit: Seth Wenig)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 10:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 9:50 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 9:48 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 9:39 am UTC
In other news, the WNBA draft was haute, a star system is hot and a Nike uniform was deemed neither haute nor hot.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 19 Apr 2024 | 9:39 am UTC
It is almost 30 years since Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger was released. In addition to allowing users to kick some Kilrathi ass, the game also played an important role in testing Windows 95.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 9:30 am UTC
The developer behind the popular, award-winning and slightly bawdy Baldur's Gate 3 confirmed that it won't be doing Baldur's Gate 4 — but it does have other irons in the fire.
"We won't be introducing any major new narrative content to the story of Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3) or its origin characters and companions, nor will we be making expansions or Baldur’s Gate 4," Larian Studio wrote in a community update on Steam. "We’re currently working on two new projects and we couldn’t be more excited about what the future has in store."
Larian promised more news about the new games "later down the line," but did give a hint about the style. "Know that even as our focus turns to these new games, the sensibilities that brought you Baldur’s Gate 3 are alive and well here at the Larian castle. I don’t know if we’re going to pull it off, but looking at our narrative, visual and gameplay plans, I think what we’re working on now will be our best work ever."
Baldur's Gate 3 has been praised for its breadth, character development, puzzles, combat, D&D fidelity and, of course, intimate relationships. It sold around 15 million copies, far exceeding the expectations of the studio, while pretty much sweeping game accolades over the last year. Namely, it took game of the year prizes at The Game Awards, The Steam Awards, D.I.C.E. awards, Streamer Awards, Hugo Awards, GLAAD Media Awards and others.
Director Swen Vincke previously revealed that the studio dropped plans for BG3 DLC and a sequel, partly due to constraints imposed by the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition mechanics. Still, there's no question of a sequel for the Hasbro-owned property. "We've done our job. It's a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. So let's pass the torch to another studio to pick up this incredible legacy," he added.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/baldurs-gate-3-developer-confirms-it-wont-make-the-sequel-091930642.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 9:19 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 9:15 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 19 Apr 2024 | 9:04 am UTC
Regardless of if you just got your hands on a PS5 or you’ve had the console for a while, chances are you had a good idea which few games you wanted to start out with. After playing those to death, maybe you’re on the hunt for the next title that will suck you into an immersive world. We can confidently say that all of the video games on our best PS5 games list do this in their own way, be they action-adventure titles, racing sims, puzzles and everything in between. As always, in building a list like this, we looked for must-play games that offer meaningful improvements over their last-gen counterparts when played on a PlayStation 5 console, or are exclusive to the system. We'll be updating this periodically, so, if a video game's just been released and you don't see it, chances are that the reason for its absence is that we haven't played through it for the first time yet. Either that or we hate it.
Read more: The best SSDs for PS5
Source: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 9:01 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:55 am UTC
Three brothers and family friend died at the scene in Clackline in the state’s wheatbelt
Three brothers, one of them only nine years old, and a family friend have been killed in a car crash in the Western Australian wheatbelt region.
The brothers, aged 21, 19 and nine, died at the scene in Clackline in the early hours of Friday morning, along with a 45-year-old man, who was visiting from NSW.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:50 am UTC
Broken Hill’s only newspaper, The Barrier Truth, closes due to cashflow problems, with staffer saying loss is ‘really sad for the community’
Broken Hill’s only newspaper has closed after almost 130 years of operation in a major blow to the outback NSW community.
The Barrier Truth’s board told staff the union-run bi-weekly paper would shut down as its final edition went to press.
Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:50 am UTC
This morning Israeli attacked Iran with a missile strike. Is this a face-saving exercise after the Iranian missile strikes on Israel or a precursor to a wider war in the Middle East?
Israel has hit Iran with a missile, US officials say, but the extent of the attack is not yet clear
Follow live updates and analysis https://t.co/Ym5n7vExJA
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) April 19, 2024
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:38 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:31 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:30 am UTC
Months after being quizzed by a committee of cross-party MPs, the UK government is still failing to clarify ways to support the substitution of millions of smart meters that will become obsolete when 2G and 3G networks are switched off.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:18 am UTC
Acting foreign minister Katy Gallagher says government is worried about potential for ‘further escalation of conflict in the region’
The Australian government has urged all parties to “exercise restraint and step back” after the US confirmed Israel has launched retaliatory strikes on Iran, bringing the Middle East closer to a regional war.
Officials in Washington said Israeli forces were carrying out military operations against Iran but did not describe the character or scale of those operations. Iranian state media said that drones had been shot down over Isfahan province in the early hours, and showed live shots of morning traffic in Isfahan city after sunrise to show that the situation was calm.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:09 am UTC
This blog is now closed.
The NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, is speaking to the media after a 16-year-old was charged with a “terrorist act” for allegedly stabbing a bishop on Monday and is expected to appear at a bedside hearing today.
She said members of the joint counter-terrorism team interviewed the alleged offender at a medical facility last night, and he was subsequently charged with a commonwealth offence for terrorism and refused bail.
We expect he will be attending a bedside court hearing today to determine bail. This relates to the stabbing of the Bishop [Mar Mari Emmanuel, who] we allege on Monday night [was] stabbed up to six times.
We also allege that the boy had travelled for 90 minutes to attend that location from his home address.
We’ve got a crisis of male violence in Australia. We know that it’s a scourge in our society, we know it must end and I think it’s really clear women can’t be expected to solve violence against women although it is time for men to step up.
I don’t think debating definitions is the way to go … We need to act, we need to educate ourselves, men need to step up, we need to talk to our sons, to our colleagues, to our friends. We need to work together to a solution. And I think going down some kind of almost a wrong path to say let’s redefine – it’s not about definitions. This is about action. We need to shift the way in which we think about this …
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:04 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:01 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 19 Apr 2024 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:51 am UTC
Large quantity of illicit psilocybin allegedly discovered at Marsden home as investigations continue into separate and unrelated deaths suspected to be mushroom-related
Queensland police have laid charges over an allegedly commercial-scale psilocybin production operation south of Brisbane, as separate and unrelated investigations continue into high-profile deaths suspected to be linked to mushrooms in Australia.
Officers from the major and organised crime squad raided two houses in Logan on Thursday, at First Avenue in Marsden and Rossmore Road in Chambers Flat, where they say they discovered large quantities of illicit psilocybin – commonly referred to as magic mushrooms.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:49 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:33 am UTC
On Call Welcome once more to On Call, The Register's Friday foray into tech support memories contributed by you, our much-appreciated readers.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:30 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:29 am UTC
We're now living in a post-Mint world. Intuit shuttered the popular budgeting app on March 24, 2024, and suggested its millions of users switch to its other finance app, Credit Karma. I, along with 3.6 million others (as of 2021, according to Bloomberg), had been Mint users for a long time. Many of us liked the Mint app for how it easily allowed us to track all accounts in one place and monitor credit scores. It was also a great tool for sticking to a monthly spending plan and setting goals like building a rainy-day fund or paying down my mortgage faster.
I gave Credit Karma a shot in the months leading up to Mint shutting down. I was left unimpressed; it’s not a true Mint alternative, so I set out to find an app that could be. The following guide lays out my experience testing some of the most popular Mint replacement apps available today. If you’re also on the hunt for a budgeting app to replace Mint, we hope these details can help you decide which of the best budgeting apps out there could meet your needs in this post-Mint world.
Mint users should consider getting their data ready to migrate to their new budgeting app of choice soon. Unfortunately, importing data from Mint is not as easy as entering your credentials from inside your new app and hitting “import.” In fact, any app that advertises the ability to port over your stats from Mint is just going to have you upload a CSV file of transactions and other data.
To download a CSV file from Mint, do the following:
Sign into Mint.com and hit Transactions in the menu on the left side of the screen.
Select an account, or all accounts.
Scroll down and look for “export [number] transactions” in smaller print.
Your CSV file should begin downloading.
Note: Downloading on a per-account basis might seem more annoying, but could help you get set up on the other side, if the app you’re using has you importing transactions one-for-one into their corresponding accounts.
Before I dove into the world of budgeting apps, I had to do some research. To find a list of apps to test, I consulted trusty ol’ Google (and even trustier Reddit); read reviews of popular apps on the App Store; and also asked friends and colleagues what budget tracking apps they might be using. Some of the apps I found were free, just like Mint. These, of course, show loads of ads (excuse me, “offers”) to stay in business. But most of the available apps require paid subscriptions, with prices typically topping out around $100 a year, or $15 a month. (Spoiler: My top pick is cheaper than that.)
Since this guide is meant to help Mint users find a permanent replacement, any services I chose to test needed to do several things: import all of your account data into one place; offer budgeting tools; and track your spending, net worth and credit score. Except where noted, all of these apps are available for iOS, Android and on the web.
Once I had my shortlist of six apps, I got to work setting them up. For the sake of thoroughly testing these apps (and remember, I really was looking for a Mint alternative myself), I made a point of adding every account to every budgeting app, no matter how small or immaterial the balance. What ensued was a veritable Groundhog Day of two-factor authentication. Just hours of entering passwords and one-time passcodes, for the same banks half a dozen times over. Hopefully, you only have to do this once.
No pun intended, but what I like about Quicken Simplifi is its simplicity. Whereas other budgeting apps try to distinguish themselves with dark themes and customizable emoji, Simplifi has a clean user interface, with a landing page that you just keep scrolling through to get a detailed overview of all your stats. These include your top-line balances; net worth; recent spending; upcoming recurring payments; a snapshot of your spending plan; top spending categories; achievements; and any watchlists you’ve set up. You can also set up savings goals elsewhere in the app. I also appreciate how it offers neat, almost playful visualizations without ever looking cluttered. I felt at home in the mobile and web dashboards after a day or so, which is faster than I adapted to some competing services (I’m looking at you, YNAB and Monarch).
Getting set up with Simplifi was mostly painless. I was particularly impressed at how easily it connected to Fidelity; not all budget trackers do, for whatever reason. This is also one of the only services I tested that gives you the option of inviting a spouse or financial advisor to co-manage your account. One thing I would add to my initial assessment of the app, having used it for a few months now: I wish Simplifi offered Zillow integration for easily tracking your home value (or at least a rough estimate of it). Various competitors including Monarch Money and Copilot Money work with Zillow, so clearly there's a Zillow API available for use. As it stands, Simplifi users must add real estate manually like any other asset.
In practice, Simplifi miscategorized some of my expenses, but nothing out of the ordinary compared to any of these budget trackers. As you’re reviewing transactions, you can also mark if you’re expecting a refund, which is a unique feature among the services I tested. Simplifi also estimated my regular income better than some other apps I tested. Most of all, I appreciated the option of being able to categorize some, but not all, purchases from a merchant as recurring. For instance, I can add my two Amazon subscribe-and-saves as recurring payments, without having to create a broad-strokes rule for every Amazon purchase.
The budgeting feature is also self-explanatory. Just check that your regular income is accurate and be sure to set up recurring payments, making note of which are bills and which are subscriptions. This is important because Simplifi shows you your total take-home income as well as an “income after bills” figure. That number includes, well, bills but not discretionary subscriptions. From there, you can add spending targets by category in the “planned spending” bucket. Planned spending can also include one-time expenditures, not just monthly budgets. When you create a budget, Simplifi will suggest a number based on a six-month average.
Not dealbreakers, but two things to keep in mind as you get started: Simplifi is notable in that you can’t set up an account through Apple or Google. There is also no option for a free trial, though Quicken promises a “30-day money back guarantee.”
Monarch Money grew on me. My first impression of the budgeting app, which was founded by a former Mint product manager, was that it's more difficult to use than others on this list, including Simplifi, NerdWallet and Copilot. And it is. Editing expense categories, adding recurring transactions and creating rules, for example, is a little more complicated than it needs to be, especially in the mobile app. (My advice: Use the web app for fine-tuning details.) Monarch also didn’t get my income right; I had to edit it.
Once you’re set up, though, Monarch offers an impressive level of granularity. In the budgets section, you can see a bona fide balance sheet showing budgets and actuals for each category. You'll also find a forecast, for the year or by month. And recurring expenses can be set not just by merchant, but other parameters as well. For instance, while most Amazon purchases might be marked as “shopping,” those for the amounts of $54.18 or $34.18 are definitely baby supplies, and can be automatically marked as such each time, not to mention programmed as recurring payments. Weirdly, though, there’s no way to mark certain recurring payments as bills, specifically.
Not long after I first published this story in December 2023, Monarch introduced a detailed reporting section where you can create on-demand graphs based on things like accounts, categories and tags. That feature is available just on the web version of the app for now. As part of this same update, Monarch added support for an aggregator that makes it possible to automatically update the value of your car. This, combined with the existing Zillow integration for tracking your home value, makes it easy to quickly add a non-liquid asset like a vehicle or real estate, and have it show up in your net worth graph.
The mobile app is mostly self-explanatory. The main dashboard shows your net worth; your four most recent transactions; a month-over-month spending comparison; income month-to-date; upcoming bills; an investments snapshot; a list of any goals you’ve set; and, finally, a link to your month-in-review. That month-in-review is more detailed than most, delving into cash flow; top income and expense categories; cash flow trends; changes to your net worth, assets and liabilities; plus asset and liability breakdowns. In February 2024, Monarch expanded on the net worth graph, so that if you click on the Accounts tab you can see how your net worth changed over different periods of time, including one month, three months, six months, a year or all time.
On the main screen, you’ll also find tabs for accounts, transactions, cash flow, budget and recurring. Like many of the other apps featured here, Monarch can auto-detect recurring expenses and income, even if it gets the category wrong. (They all do to an extent.) Expense categories are marked by emoji, which you can customize if you’re so inclined.
Monarch Money uses a combination of networks to connect with banks, including Plaid, MX and Finicity, a competing network owned by Mastercard. (I have a quick explainer on Plaid, the industry standard in this space, toward the end of this guide.) As part of an update in late December, Monarch has also made it easier to connect through those other two networks, if for some reason Plaid fails. Similar to NerdWallet, I found myself completing two-factor authentication every time I wanted to get past the Plaid screen to add another account. Notably, Monarch is the only other app I tested that allows you to grant access to someone else in your family — likely a spouse or financial advisor. Monarch also has a Chrome extension for importing from Mint, though really this is just a shortcut for downloading a CSV file, which you’ll have to do regardless of where you choose to take your Mint data.
Additionally, Monarch just added the ability to track Apple Card, Apple Cash, and Savings accounts, thanks to new functionality brought with the iOS 17.4 update. It's not the only one either; currently, Copilot and YNAB have also added similar functionality that will be available to anyone with the latest versions of their respective apps on a device running iOS 17.4. Instead of manually uploading statements, the new functionality allows apps like Monarch's to automatically pull in transactions and balance history. That should make it easier to account for spending on Apple cards and accounts throughout the month.
Monarch also recently launched investment transactions in beta. It also says bill tracking and an overhauled goals system are coming soon. Monarch hasn't provided a timeline for that last one, except to say that the improved goals feature is coming in early 2024.
Copilot Money might be the best-looking budgeting app I tested. It also has the distinction of being exclusive to iOS and Macs — at least for now. Andres Ugarte, the company’s CEO, has publicly promised that Android and web apps are coming in 2024 (more likely the second half of the year, Ugarte tells me). But until it follows through, I can’t recommend Copilot for most people with so many good competitors out there.
Copilot Money for Web and Android!
— Andres Ugarte (@chuga) November 15, 2023
Thanks to the support from our users, and the overwhelming positive reception we're seeing from folks migrating from Mint, we can now say that we'll be building @copilotmoney for Web and Android with a goal to launch in 2024.
We'll continue to…
There are other features that Copilot is missing, which I’ll get into. But it is promising, and one to keep an eye on. It’s just a fast, efficient, well designed app, and Android users will be in for a treat when they’ll finally be able to download it. It makes good use of colors, emoji and graphs to help you understand at a glance how you’re doing on everything from your budgets to your investment performance to your credit card debt over time. In particular, Copilot does a better job than almost any other app of visualizing your recurring monthly expenses.
Behind those punchy colors and cutesy emoji, though, is some sophisticated performance. Copilot’s AI-powered “Intelligence” gets smarter as you go at categorizing your expenses. (You can also add your own categories, complete with your choice of emoji.) It’s not perfect. Copilot miscategorized some purchases (they all do), but it makes it easier to edit than most. On top of that, the internal search feature is very fast; it starts whittling down results in your transaction history as soon as you begin typing.
Copilot is also unique in offering Amazon and Venmo integrations, allowing you to see transaction details. With Amazon, this requires just signing into your Amazon account via an in-app browser. For Venmo, you have to set up fwd@copilot.money as a forwarding address and then create a filter, wherein emails from venmo@venmo.com are automatically forwarded to fwd@copilot.money. Like Monarch Money, you can also add any property you own and track its value through Zillow, which is integrated with the app.
While the app is heavily automated, I still appreciate that Copilot marks new transactions for review. It’s a good way to both weed out fraudulent charges, and also be somewhat intentional about your spending habits.
Like Monarch Money, Copilot updated its app to make it easier to connect to banks through networks other than Plaid. As part of the same update, Copilot said it has improved its connections to both American Express and Fidelity which, again, can be a bugbear for some budget tracking apps. In an even more recent update, Copilot added a Mint import option, which other budgeting apps have begun to offer as well.
Because the app is relatively new (it launched in early 2020), the company is still catching up to the competition on some table-stakes features. Ugarte told me that his team is almost done building out a detailed cash flow section, which could launch before the end of 2023, but more likely in early 2024. On its website, Copilot also promises a raft of AI-powered features that build on its current “Intelligence” platform, the one that powers its smart expense categorization. These include “smart financial goals,” natural language search, a chat interface, forecasting and benchmarking. That benchmarking, Ugarte tells me, is meant to give people a sense of how they’re doing compared to other Copilot users, on both spending and investment performance. Most of these features should arrive in the new year.
Copilot does a couple interesting things for new customers that distinguish it from the competition. There’s a “demo mode” that feels like a game simulator; no need to add your own accounts. The company is also offering two free months with RIPMINT — a more generous introductory offer than most. When it finally does come time to pony up, the $7.92 monthly plan is cheaper than some competing apps, although the $95-a-year-option is in the same ballpark.
You may know NerdWallet as a site that offers a mix of personal finance news, explainers and guides. I see it often when I google a financial term I don’t know and sure enough, it’s one of the sites I’m most likely to click on. As it happens, NerdWallet also has the distinction of offering one of the only free budgeting apps I tested. In fact, there is no paid version; nothing is locked behind a paywall. The main catch: There are ads everywhere. To be fair, the free version of Mint was like this, too.
Even with the inescapable credit card offers, NerdWallet has a clean, easy-to-understand user interface, which includes both a web and a mobile app. The key metrics that it highlights most prominently are your cash flow, net worth and credit score. (Of note, although Mint itself offered credit score monitoring, most of its rivals do not.) I particularly enjoyed the weekly insights, which delve into things like where you spent the most money or how much you paid in fees — and how that compares to the previous month. Because this is NerdWallet, an encyclopedia of financial info, you get some particularly specific category options when setting up your accounts (think: a Roth or non-Roth IRA).
As a budgeting app, NerdWallet is more than serviceable, if a bit basic. Like other apps I tested, you can set up recurring bills. Importantly, it follows the popular 50/30/20 budgeting rule, which has you putting 50% of your budget toward things you need, 30% toward things you want, and the remaining 20% into savings or debt repayments. If this works for you, great — just know that you can’t customize your budget to the same degree as some competing apps. You can’t currently create custom spending categories, though a note inside the dashboard section of the app says “you’ll be able to customize them in the future.” You also can’t move items from the wants column to “needs” or vice versa but “In the future, you'll be able to move specific transactions to actively manage what falls into each group.” A NerdWallet spokesperson declined to provide an ETA, though.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that NerdWallet had one of the most onerous setup processes of any app I tested. I don’t think this is a dealbreaker, as you’ll only have to do it once and, hopefully, you aren’t setting up six or seven apps in tandem as I was. What made NerdWallet’s onboarding especially tedious is that every time I wanted to add an account, I had to go through a two-factor authentication process to even get past the Plaid splash screen, and that’s not including the 2FA I had set up at each of my banks. This is a security policy on NerdWallet’s end, not Plaid’s, a Plaid spokesperson says.
Precisely because NerdWallet is one of the only budget trackers to offer credit score monitoring, it also needs more of your personal info during setup, including your birthday, address, phone number and the last four digits of your social security number. It’s the same with Credit Karma, which also does credit score monitoring.
Related to the setup process, I found that NerdWallet was less adept than other apps at automatically detecting my regular income. In my case, it counted a large one-time wire transfer as income, at which point my only other option was to enter my income manually (which is slightly annoying because I would have needed my pay stub handy to double-check my take-home pay).
YNAB is, by its own admission, “different from anything you’ve tried before.” The app, whose name is short for You Need a Budget, promotes a so-called zero-based budgeting system, which forces you to assign a purpose for every dollar you earn. A frequently used analogy is to put each dollar in an envelope; you can always move money from one envelope to another in a pinch. These envelopes can include rent and utilities, along with unforeseen expenses like holiday gifts and the inevitable car repair. The idea is that if you budget a certain amount for the unknowns each month, they won’t feel like they’re sneaking up on you.
Importantly, YNAB is only concerned with the money you have in your accounts now. The app does not ask you to provide your take-home income or set up recurring income payments (although there is a way to do this). The money you will make later in the month through your salaried job is not relevant, because YNAB does not engage in forecasting.
The app is harder to learn than any other here, and it requires more ongoing effort from the user. And YNAB knows that. Inside both the mobile and web apps are links to videos and other tutorials. Although I never quite got comfortable with the user interface, I did come to appreciate YNAB’s insistence on intentionality. Forcing users to draft a new budget each month and to review each transaction is not necessarily a bad thing. As YNAB says on its website, “Sure, you’ve got pie charts showing that you spent an obscene amount of money in restaurants — but you’ve still spent an obscene amount of money in restaurants.” I can see this approach being useful for people who don’t tend to have a lot of cash in reserve at a given time, or who have spending habits they want to correct (to riff off of YNAB’s own example, ordering Seamless four times a week).
My colleague Valentina Palladino, knowing I was working on this guide, penned a respectful rebuttal, explaining why she’s been using YNAB for years. Perhaps, like her, you have major savings goals you want to achieve, whether it’s paying for a wedding or buying a house. I suggest you give her column a read. For me, though, YNAB’s approach feels like overkill.
PocketGuard is one of the only reputable free budget trackers I found in my research. Just know it’s far more restricted at the free tier than NerdWallet or Mint. In my testing, I was prompted to pay after I attempted to link more than two bank accounts. So much for free, unless you keep things simple with one cash account and one credit card. When it comes time to upgrade to PocketGuard Plus, you have three options: pay $7.99 a month, $34.99 a year or $79.99 for a one-time lifetime license. That lifetime option is actually one of the few unique selling points for me: I’m sure some people will appreciate paying once and never having to, uh, budget for it again.
From the main screen, you’ll see tabs for accounts, insights, transactions and the “Plan,” which is where you see recurring payments stacked on top of what looks like a budget. The main overview screen shows you your net worth, total assets and debts; net income and total spending for the month; upcoming bills; a handy reminder of when your next paycheck lands; any debt payoff plan you have; and any goals.
Like some other apps, including Quicken Simplifi, PocketGuard promotes an “after bills” approach, where you enter all of your recurring bills, and then PocketGuard shows you what’s left, and that’s what you’re supposed to be budgeting: your disposable income. Obviously, other apps have a different philosophy: take into account all of your post-tax income and use it to pay the bills, purchase things you want and maybe even save a little. But in PocketGuard, it’s the “in your pocket” number that’s most prominent. To PocketGuard’s credit, it does a good job visualizing which bills are upcoming and which ones you’ve already paid.
PocketGuard has also publicly committed to adding some popular features in early 2024. These include rollover budgeting in January 2024, categorization rules in February and shared household access in March.
Although PocketGuard’s UI is easy enough to understand, it lacks polish. The “accounts” tab is a little busy, and doesn’t show totals for categories like cash or investments. Seemingly small details like weirdly phrased or punctuated copy occasionally make the app feel janky. More than once, it prompted me to update the app when no updates were available. The web version, meanwhile, feels like the mobile app blown up to a larger format and doesn’t take advantage of the extra screen real estate.
Of note, although PocketGuard does work with Plaid, its primary bank-connecting platform is actually Finicity. Setting up my accounts through Finicity was mostly a straightforward process. I did encounter one hiccup: Finicity would not connect to my SoFi account. I was able to do it through Plaid, but PocketGuard doesn’t make it easy to access Plaid in the app. The only way, as far as I can tell, is to knowingly search for the name of a bank that isn’t available through Finicity, at which point you get the option to try Plaid instead. Like I said: the experience can be janky.
Each of the apps I tested uses the same underlying network, called Plaid, to pull in financial data, so it’s worth explaining in its own section what it is and how it works. Plaid was founded as a fintech startup in 2013 and is today the industry standard in connecting banks with third-party apps. Plaid works with over 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada and Europe. Additionally, more than 8,000 third-party apps and services rely on Plaid, the company claims.
To be clear, you don’t need a dedicated Plaid app to use it; the technology is baked into a wide array of apps, including the budget trackers I tested for this guide. Once you find the “add an account” option in whichever one you’re using, you’ll see a menu of commonly used banks. There’s also a search field you can use to look yours up directly. Once you find yours, you’ll be prompted to enter your login credentials. If you have two-factor authentication set up, you’ll need to enter a one-time passcode as well.
As the middleman, Plaid is a passthrough for information that may include your account balances, transaction history, account type and routing or account number. Plaid uses encryption, and says it has a policy of not selling or renting customer data to other companies. However, I would not be doing my job if I didn’t note that in 2022 Plaid was forced to pay $58 million to consumers in a class action suit for collecting “more financial data than was needed.” As part of the settlement, Plaid was compelled to change some of its business practices.
In a statement provided to Engadget, a Plaid spokesperson said the company continues to deny the allegations underpinning the lawsuit and that “the crux of the non-financial terms in the settlement are focused on us accelerating workstreams already underway related to giving people more transparency into Plaid’s role in connecting their accounts, and ensuring that our workstreams around data minimization remain on track.”
To conclude, you might be wondering what app I decided on for myself after all of this research. The answer is actually two apps: Quicken Simplifi, my overall top pick, and Copilot Money. For now, I am actively using both apps and still deciding, long-term, which I feel more comfortable with. I tend to prefer Copilot's fast, colorful user interface, but as I explained above, it's too lacking in table-stakes features for me to go so far as to name it the best overall option.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-budgeting-apps-to-replace-mint-143047346.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:01 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:47 am UTC
Company says Chinese government ordered it to remove two Meta-owned apps for ‘national security’ reasons
Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its Chinese App Store after the Chinese government ordered it to do so for “national security” reasons.
Apple confirmed it had withdrawn the two apps – both owned by Meta, also the owner of Facebook – under instruction from the Cyberspace Administration of China, which regulates and censors China’s highly restricted internet and online content.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:46 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:37 am UTC
A UK federation of trades unions has published a bill designed to protect workers from “the risks and harms” of AI-powered decision-making in the workplace.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:29 am UTC
Apple users in China won't be able to find and download WhatsApp and Threads from the App Store anymore, according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The company said it pulled the apps from the store to comply with orders it received from Cyberspace Administration, China's internet regulator, "based on [its] national security concerns." It explained to the publications that it's "obligated to follow the laws in the countries where [it operates], even when [it disagrees]."
The Great Firewall of China blocks a lot of non-domestic apps and technologies in the country, prompting locals to use VPN if they want to access any of them. Meta's Facebook and Instagram are two of those applications, but WhatsApp and Threads have been available for download until now. The Chinese regulator's order comes shortly before the Senate is set to vote on a bill that could lead to a TikTok ban in the US. Cyberspace Administration's reasoning — that the apps are a national security concern — even echoes American lawmakers' argument for blocking TikTok in the country.
In the current version of the bill, ByteDance will have a year to divest TikTok, or else the short form video-sharing platform will be banned from app stores. The House is expected to pass the bill, which is part of a package that also includes aid to Ukraine and Israel. President Joe Biden previously said that he supports the package and will immediately sign the bills into law.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-says-it-was-ordered-it-to-remove-whatsapp-and-threads-from-china-app-store-061441223.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:14 am UTC
When Huawei debuted its Mate 60 smartphone in mid-2023, it turned heads around the world after teardown artists found it contained a system-on-chip manufactured by Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) using a 7nm process.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 6:01 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:50 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 5:30 am UTC
Oracle has had a big win in Japan that could turn into something enormous, and also revealed plans to score more success in the land of the rising sun.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:50 am UTC
With the Eras Tour still under way and The Tortured Poets Department dropping today, you can't shake off Taylor Swift these days. She's everywhere — in the news, on streaming services and on social media, which now includes Threads. Taylor's Threads account, and her first post, are going live around midnight. And if you're one of the first people to share her post, you'll get a custom badge based on her new album's artwork that you can display on your Threads profile.
Meta has been dropping hints and releasing easter eggs for Swifties over the past week as part of a countdown for her album release today. You may have even seen its call to pre-follow Swift on Threads, along with the shimmer effect that's been showing up on conversations on the social network with Taylor-related hashtags. Celebratory hearts pop up when you like relevant posts, as well.
On Instagram, you'll be able to change the background in your DMs with one that's inspired by TPD's artwork. The company told Engadget that the countdown on Taylor's Instagram profile will also reset, and you can apparently expect yet another surprise to go live at 2AM ET.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/surprise-taylor-swift-is-joining-threads-on-the-day-her-new-album-drops-040026147.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 19 Apr 2024 | 4:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 3:30 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:42 am UTC
First phase in world’s largest democratic exercise begins, with 969 million people eligible to vote over six-week period
Voting has begun in India’s mammoth general election, as Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party hopes to increase its parliamentary majority amid allegations that the country’s democracy has been undermined since it came to power 10 years ago.
India’s elections are the largest democratic exercise in the world, with more than 969 million voters, amounting to more than 10% of the world’s population. The voting began at 8am on Friday, when polling opened at 102 constituencies across the country, and will continue over the next six weeks, in seven phases, until 1 June. All the results will be counted and declared on 4 June.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 2:28 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:25 am UTC
President’s suggestion that his ‘Uncle Bosie’ was eaten by cannibals harms US efforts to build Pacific ties, say local experts
Joe Biden’s suggestion that his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea during world war two has been met with a mixture of bemusement and criticism in the country.
Biden spoke about his uncle, 2nd Lt Ambrose J Finnegan Jr, while campaigning in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, describing how “Uncle Bosie” had flown single engine planes as reconnaissance flights during the war. Biden said he “got shot down in New Guinea”, adding “they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Apr 2024 | 1:20 am UTC
Meta has unleashed its latest large language model (LLM) – named Llama 3 – and claims it will challenge much larger models from the likes of Google, Mistral, and Anthropic.…
Source: The Register | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:57 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:45 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:15 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Apr 2024 | 12:02 am UTC
Enlarge / The SLS rocket is seen on its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in August 2022. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)
On Thursday senior Boeing officials leading the Space Launch System program, including David Dutcher and Steve Snell, convened an all-hands meeting for the more than 1,000 employees who work on the rocket.
According to two people familiar with the meeting, the officials announced that there would be a significant number of layoffs and reassignments of people working on the program. They offered a handful of reasons for the cuts, including the fact that timelines for NASA's Artemis lunar missions that will use the SLS rocket are slipping to the right.
Later on Thursday, in a statement provided to Ars, a Boeing spokesperson confirmed the cuts: "Due to external factors unrelated to our program performance, Boeing is reviewing and adjusting current staffing levels on the Space Launch System program."
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 18 Apr 2024 | 11:52 pm UTC
Video The US Air Force Test Pilot School and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) claim to have achieved a breakthrough in machine learning by demonstrating that AI software can fly a modified F-16 fighter jet in a dogfight against human pilots.…
Source: The Register | 18 Apr 2024 | 11:45 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 18 Apr 2024 | 11:13 pm UTC
The bill that could lead to a ban of TikTok in the United States appears to be much closer to becoming law. The legislation sailed through the House of Representatives last month, but faced an uncertain future in the Senate due to opposition from a few prominent lawmakers.
But momentum for the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” seems to once again be growing. The House is set to vote on a package of bills this weekend, which includes a slightly revised version of the TikTok bill. In the latest version of the bill, ByteDance would have up to 12 months to divest TikTok, instead of the six-month period stipulated in the original measure.
That change, as NBC News notes, was apparently key to winning over support from some skeptical members of the Senate, including Sen. Maria Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee. So with the House expected to pass the revised bill Saturday — it’s part of a package that also includes aid to Ukraine and Israel — its path forward is starting to look much more certain, with a Senate vote coming “as early as next week,” according to NBC. President Joe Biden has said he would sign the bill if it’s passed by Congress.
If passed into law, TikTok (and potentially other apps "controlled by a foreign adversary" and deemed to be a national security threat) would face a ban in US app stores if it declined to sell to a new owner. TikTok CEO Shou Chew has suggested the company would likely mount a legal challenge to the law.
“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually,” TikTok said in a statement.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-bill-that-could-ban-tiktok-is-barreling-ahead-230518984.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 18 Apr 2024 | 11:05 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 18 Apr 2024 | 11:01 pm UTC
Critics condemn ‘reckless and cruel’ expulsions and say deportees likely to be targeted by armed gangs who control much of country
More than 70 Haitians expelled from the United States have been flown back to Haiti on the first deportation flight since heavily armed gangs launched a bloody insurrection which has paralysed the capital and forced the prime minister from office.
The flight, which landed in the port city of Cap-Haïtien early on Thursday, was described as “inhumane” by human rights activists who warned that deportees would likely be targeted by the criminal factions who control most of the country.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 18 Apr 2024 | 10:34 pm UTC
Octapharma Plasma has blamed IT "network issues" for the ongoing closure of its 150-plus centers across the US. It's feared a ransomware infection may be the root cause of the medical firm's ailment.…
Source: The Register | 18 Apr 2024 | 10:27 pm UTC
Enlarge / Miami Beach, Fire Rescue ambulance at Mt. Sinai Medical Center hospital. ] (credit: Getty | Jeffrey Greenberg/)
Since 2021, federal law has required hospitals to publicly post their prices, allowing Americans to easily anticipate costs and shop around for affordable care—as they would for any other marketed service or product. But hospitals have mostly failed miserably at complying with the law.
A 2023 KFF analysis on compliance found that the pricing information hospitals provided is "messy, inconsistent, and confusing, making it challenging, if not impossible, for patients or researchers to use them for their intended purpose." A February 2024 report from the nonprofit organization Patient Rights Advocate found that only 35 percent of 2,000 US hospitals surveyed were in full compliance with the 2021 rule.
But even if hospitals dramatically improved their price transparency, it likely wouldn't help when patients need emergency trauma care. After an unexpected, major injury, people are sent to the closest hospital and aren't likely to be shopping around for the best price from the back of an ambulance. If they did, though, they might also need to be treated for shock.
Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 18 Apr 2024 | 10:14 pm UTC
Enlarge / Morfydd Clark is Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. (credit: Amazon Studios)
Subscribers lodged thousands of complaints related to inaccuracies in Amazon's Prime Video catalog, including incorrect content and missing episodes, according to a Business Insider report this week. While Prime Video users aren't the only streaming users dealing with these problems, Insider's examination of leaked "internal documents" brings more perspective into the impact of mislabeling and similar errors on streaming platforms.
Insider didn't publish the documents but said they show that "60 percent of all content-related customer-experience complaints for Prime Video last year were about catalogue errors," such as movies or shows labeled with wrong or missing titles.
Specific examples reportedly named in the document include Season 1, Episode 2 of The Rings of Power being available before Season 1, Episode 1; character names being mistranslated; Continuum displaying the wrong age rating; and the Spanish-audio version of Die Hard With a Vengeance missing a chunk of audio.
Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 18 Apr 2024 | 10:05 pm UTC
Crooks are exploiting month-old OpenMetadata vulnerabilities in Kubernetes environments to mine cryptocurrency using victims' resources, according to Microsoft.…
Source: The Register | 18 Apr 2024 | 9:53 pm UTC
Netflix will stop disclosing the number of people who signed up for its service, as well as the revenue it generates from each subscriber from next year, the company announced on Thursday. It will focus, instead, on highlighting revenue growth and the amount of time spent on its platform.
“In our early days, when we had little revenue or profit, membership growth was a strong indicator of our future potential,” the company said in a letter to shareholders. “But now we’re generating very substantial profit and free cash flow.”
Netflix revealed that the service added 9.33 million subscribers over the last few months, bringing the total number of paying households worldwide to nearly 270 million. Despite its decision to stop reporting user numbers each quarter, Netflix said that the company will “announce major subscriber milestones as we cross them,” which means we’ll probably hear about it when it crosses 300 million.
Netflix estimates that more than half a billion people around the world watch TV shows and movies through its service, an audience it is now figuring out how to squeeze even more money out of through new pricing tiers, a crackdown on password-sharing, and showing ads. Over the last few years, it has also steadily added games like the Grand Theft Auto trilogy, Hades, Dead Cells, Braid, and more, to its catalog.
Subscriber metrics are an important signal to Wall Street because they show how quickly a company is growing. But Netflix’s move to stop reporting these is something that we’ve seen from other companies before. In February, Meta announced that it would no longer break out the number of daily and monthly Facebook users each quarter but only reveal how many people collectively used Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. In 2018, Apple, too, stopped reporting the number of iPhones, iPads, and Macs it sold each quarter, choosing to focus, instead, on how much money it made in each category.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflix-is-done-telling-us-how-many-people-use-netflix-215149971.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 18 Apr 2024 | 9:51 pm UTC
X's chatbot Grok is supposed to be an AI engine crunching the platform's posts to surface and summarize breaking news, but this week, Grok's flaws were once again exposed when the chatbot got confused and falsely accused an NBA star of criminal vandalism.
"Klay Thompson Accused in Bizarre Brick-Vandalism Spree," Grok's headline read in an AI-powered trending-tab post that has remained on X (formerly Twitter) for days. Beneath the headline, Grok went into even more detail to support its fake reporting:
In a bizarre turn of events, NBA star Klay Thompson has been accused of vandalizing multiple houses with bricks in Sacramento. Authorities are investigating the claims after several individuals reported their houses being damaged, with windows shattered by bricks. Klay Thompson has not yet issued a statement regarding the accusations. The incidents have left the community shaken, but no injuries were reported. The motive behind the alleged vandalism remains unclear.
Grok appears to be confusing a common basketball term, where players are said to be throwing "bricks" when they take an airball shot that doesn't hit the rim. According to SF Gate, which was one of the first outlets to report the Grok error, Thompson had an "all-time rough shooting" night, hitting none of his shots on what was his emotional last game with the Golden State Warriors before becoming an unrestricted free agent.
Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 18 Apr 2024 | 9:47 pm UTC
The Biden Administration is “actively suppressing intelligence reports” about the state of U.S. military relations with Niger, according to a new report issued by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. U.S. military service members told Gaetz’s office that they can’t get medicine, mail, or other support from the Pentagon.
“The Biden Administration and the State Department are engaged in a massive cover-up,” Gaetz told The Intercept. “They are hiding the true conditions on the ground of U.S. diplomatic relations in Niger and are effectively abandoning our troops in that country with no help in sight.”
Last month, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to the national television network to denounce the United States and end the long-standing counterterrorism partnership between the two countries. Abdramane revoked his country’s agreement allowing U.S. troops and civilian Defense Department employees to operate in Niger, declaring that the security pact, in effect since 2012, violated Niger’s constitution.
The Pentagon has maintained in the month since that it is seeking clarification.
“The Biden Administration and the State Department are engaged in a massive cover-up.”
“The U.S. government continues to work to obtain clarification,” Gen. Michael Langley, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, told The Intercept on Thursday.
Gaetz’s report contends that the U.S. Embassy in Niger, under Ambassador Kathleen FitzGibbon, is “covering up the failure of their U.S. diplomatic efforts in Niger.” The report says the embassy is “dismissing or suppressing” intelligence from the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, or OSI, as well as Special Operations Command Africa.
“When our AFRICOM leaders look to us to provide atmospherics on the ground, they go to the Embassy first and hear a watered down or false story than what is being reported,” according to one service member quoted in the report. “I know of at least 3 reports from OSI about Nigerien sentiment that have been discredited by the Embassy and turned out to be 100% true.” (The State Department denied the allegations but did not provide a statement on the record.)
Gaetz said, “They are suppressing intelligence because they don’t want to acknowledge that their multibillion-dollar flop for Niger to be centerpiece of their Africa Strategy has been a complete and total failure.”
In interviews conducted by Gaetz’s office, U.S. service members currently serving in Niger said they are, as the report put it, “functionally stranded” in the increasingly hostile country. The military officials said they are prohibited from conducting missions or from returning home at the scheduled end of their deployments.
“No flights are authorized by Niger to enter or exit the country in support of DoD efforts or requirements,” reads the report which notes that mail, food, equipment, and medical supplies “are being prevented from reaching” Air Base 201, the large U.S. drone base in the town of Agadez, on the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert.
“Some diplomatic clearances for military flights have recently been denied or not responded to, which has forced extended deployments in some cases,” Langley said, in a statement to The Intercept.
Pentagon spokesperson Pete Nguyen told The Intercept that “sustainment” of U.S. personnel has continued through commercial means, and the Pentagon is in “discussions” with the junta “to approve clearances on our upcoming regularly scheduled flights.”
Military personnel said the blood bank at Air Base 201 is not being replenished, possibly jeopardizing troops in the event of a mass casualty situation.
Next month, critical medications will also run out for individual service members. U.S. personnel “have repeatedly reached out for assistance but their strategic higher headquarters such as AFRICOM routinely overlook their concerns and those of AB101’s higher chain of command, or simply do not provide relief or guidance,” reads the report, referring to Air Base 101, located at the main commercial airport in Niger’s capital, Niamey.
“The Biden administration needs to acknowledge that their plan in Niger has failed and they need to bring these troops home immediately,” Gaetz told The Intercept. “If there is no remedy between Niger and the United States before the end of the month, our troops will be in immediate danger.”
The post U.S. Troops in Niger Say They’re “Stranded” and Can’t Get Mail, Medicine appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 18 Apr 2024 | 9:22 pm UTC
Enlarge / Reddit user Kidipadeli75 spotted a fossilized hominin jawbone in his parents' new travertine kitchen tile. (credit: Reddit user Kidipadeli75)
Ah, Reddit! It's a constant source of amazing stories that sound too good to be true... and yet! The latest example comes to us from a user named Kidipadeli75, a dentist who visited his parents after the latter's kitchen renovation and noticed what appeared to be a human-like jawbone embedded in the new travertine tile. Naturally, he posted a photograph to Reddit seeking advice and input. And Reddit was happy to oblige.
User MAJOR_Blarg, for instance, is a dentist "with forensic odontology training" and offered the following:
While all old-world monkeys, apes, and hominids share the same dental formula, 2-1-2-3, and the individual molars and premolars can look similar, the specific spacing in the mandible itself is very specifically and characteristically human, or at least related and very recent hominid relative/ancestor. Most likely human given the success of the proliferation of H.s. and the (relatively) rapid formation of travertine.
Against modern Homo sapiens, which may not be entirely relevant, the morphology of the mandible is likely not northern European, but more similar to African, middle Eastern, mainland Asian.
Another user, deamatrona, who claims to hold an anthropology degree, also thought the dentition looked Asiatic, "which could be a significant find." The thread also drew the attention of John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and longtime science blogger who provided some valuable context on his own website. (Hawks has been involved with the team that discovered Homo naledi at the Rising Star cave system in 2013.)
Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 18 Apr 2024 | 9:16 pm UTC
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Benj Edwards)
On Thursday, Meta unveiled early versions of its Llama 3 open-weights AI model that can be used to power text composition, code generation, or chatbots. It also announced that its Meta AI Assistant is now available on a website and is going to be integrated into its major social media apps, intensifying the company's efforts to position its products against other AI assistants like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, and Google's Gemini.
Like its predecessor, Llama 2, Llama 3 is notable for being a freely available, open-weights large language model (LLM) provided by a major AI company. Llama 3 technically does not quality as "open source" because that term has a specific meaning in software (as we have mentioned in other coverage), and the industry has not yet settled on terminology for AI model releases that ship either code or weights with restrictions (you can read Llama 3's license here) or that ship without providing training data. We typically call these releases "open weights" instead.
At the moment, Llama 3 is available in two parameter sizes: 8 billion (8B) and 70 billion (70B), both of which are available as free downloads through Meta's website with a sign-up. Llama 3 comes in two versions: pre-trained (basically the raw, next-token-prediction model) and instruction-tuned (fine-tuned to follow user instructions). Each has a 8,192 token context limit.
Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 18 Apr 2024 | 9:04 pm UTC
Stability AI is laying off staff in its search of steadier footing following the sudden departure of its CEO late last month.…
Source: The Register | 18 Apr 2024 | 8:52 pm UTC
Like many other multiplayer games, Overwatch 2 isn't immune from cheaters. And it's not only an issue on PC, where cheaters use tools like aimbots. Some folks use XIM devices so they can play with a keyboard and mouse (KBM) on consoles. This is against Blizzard's rules, as KBM players typically have an aim advantage over those who use a controller, even though the console versions of the game have features like aim assist. While it's taken some time to get the ball rolling, the developer is finally doing something about the XIM problem.
XIM devices trick consoles into believing that KBM users are playing with a controller. However, in a blog post, Blizzard says it has been able to detect KBM players on consoles over the last few Overwatch 2 seasons. It has found that the cheating problem is more prevalent among higher ranked players. The developers say that use of so-called unapproved peripherals is "very rare" in lower ranks.
During the current season (which started this week), Blizzard will dish out permanent bans to the most extreme users of unapproved peripherals. It will rely on reports from other players and its own data to pinpoint those who are breaking the rules.
Starting in Season 11, which should get underway in June, the developers will tackle the issue at a broader level. The first time a console player is detected using an unapproved device on consoles, they'll be banned from Competitive modes for a week. If they keep using KBM or other unapproved peripherals in casual modes, they'll get a season-long Competitive suspension, only have the option of playing with other KBM users in Quick Play and lose access to aim assist features. It's all in the name of fairness.
There are accessibility concerns here, though, as some folks simply can't play games with a standard controller. Blizzard says that it has done its "utmost to ensure that players with accessibility needs will be less likely to trigger our detection." The developers say they will tailor their enforcement actions so that folks with accessibility needs can still land a sick Earthshatter or keep healing their teammates.
With all that said, Blizzard is looking into adding official KBM support on consoles so folks can play the game that way without negatively impacting controller players. As things stand, console and PC players are separated into separate pools for Competitive play. So to make things fair, Blizzard would need to shuffle console players who want to use a keyboard and mouse into games with other KBM players and no aim assist.
The XIM problem isn't exactly new. The Overwatch 2 developers' colleagues at Activision last year started banning Call of Duty players who spoof input devices (or just messing with them, as usual). Ubisoft and Epic have also targeted XIM users in Rainbow Six: Siege and Fortnite, respectively.
Blizzard is doing more on other fronts to try to keep Overwatch 2 fair and more enjoyable for the majority of players. It's punishing those who leave in the middle of matches more severely and taking a stronger stance on toxicity in voice and text chat.
Meanwhile, there's been a kerfuffle this week related to Overwatch 2 players being banned for using profanity. Those who use slurs or threaten others should obviously face appropriate consequences, but apparently booting out players from a game that has profanity filters for some slightly spicy trash talk is some kind of BS.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/blizzard-takes-aim-at-overwatch-2-console-cheaters-203923200.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 18 Apr 2024 | 8:39 pm UTC
IBM has been accused of cheating its executive assistants by denying them overtime pay and meal breaks and retaliating against them for accurately reporting their working hours.…
Source: The Register | 18 Apr 2024 | 8:25 pm UTC
Enlarge / For just $199, you could be having as much fun as this paid model.
Meta has announced it's permanently lowering the price of its aging Quest 2 headset to $199 for a 128GB base model, representing the company's lowest price yet for a full-featured untethered VR headset.
The Quest 2, which launched in 2020 at $299, famously defied tech product convention by increasing its MSRP to $399 amid inflation and supply chain issues in mid-2022. Actual prices for the headset at retail have fallen since then, though; Best Buy offered new units for $299 as of last October and for $250 by the 2023 post-Thanksgiving shopping season, for instance.
And the Quest 2 is far from the company's state-of-the-art headset at this point. Meta launched the surprisingly expensive Quest Pro in late 2022 before dropping that headset's price from $1,499 to $999 less than five months later. And last year's launch of the Quest 3 at a $499 starting price brought some significant improvements in resolution, processing power, thickness, and full-color passthrough images over the Quest 2.
Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 18 Apr 2024 | 8:24 pm UTC
Enlarge / Google HQ. (credit: Getty Images)
Google is doing a major re-org of Android, Chrome, and the Google hardware division: They're merging! Google Hardware SVP Rick Osterloh will lead the new "Platforms and Devices” division. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's previous head of software platforms like Android and ChromeOS, will be headed to "some new projects" at Google.
"Having a unified team across Platforms & Devices will help us deliver higher quality products and experiences for our users and partners," writes Google CEO Sundar Pichai. "It will help us turbocharge the Android and Chrome ecosystems, and bring the best innovations to partners faster — as we did with Circle to Search with Samsung. And internally, it will also speed up decision-making."
Google also justifies the decision the same way it does most decisions nowadays: by saying it's AI-related. The announcement is a few paragraphs in a wide-ranging post by Pichai, titled, "Building for our AI future," and the new division is taking a chunk of Google Research along with it, specifically the group that has been working on computational photography. Pichai wants the team to live in "the intersection of hardware, software, and AI."
Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 18 Apr 2024 | 8:12 pm UTC
Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches a Starlink mission in January 2020. (credit: SpaceX)
SpaceX is reportedly working with at least one major US defense contractor, Northrop Grumman, on a constellation of spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office.
According to Reuters, development of the network of hundreds of spy satellites by SpaceX is being coordinated with multiple contractors to avoid putting too much control of a highly sensitive intelligence program in the hands of one company.
"It is in the government's interest to not be totally invested in one company run by one person," one of the news agency's sources said, most likely referring to SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 18 Apr 2024 | 7:54 pm UTC
Children of the Sun burst onto the indie scene like a muzzle flash on a dark night. Publisher Devolver Digital dropped the game’s first trailer on February 1, showcasing frenzied sniper shots and a radioactive art style. A Steam demo highlighting its initial seven stages went live that same day and became a breakout hit during February’s Steam Next Fest. Two months later it landed in full and to broad acclaim. This explosive reveal and rapid release timeline mirrors the game itself — chaotic but contained, swift and direct, sharp and bright.
Though it feels like Children of the Sun popped into existence over the span of two months, it took solo developer René Rother more than 20 years to get here.
As a kid in Berlin in the early 2000s, Rother was fascinated by the booming mod community. He spent his time messing around with free Counter-Strike mapping tools and Quake III mods from the demo discs tucked into his PC magazines. Rother daydreamed about having a job in game development, but it never felt like an attainable goal.
“It just didn't seem possible to make games,” he told Engadget. “It's like it was this huge black box.”
Rother couldn’t see an easy entry point until the 2010s, when mesh libraries and tools like GameMaker and Unity became more accessible. He discovered a fondness for creating 3D interactive art. But aside from some free online Javascript courses, he didn’t know how to program anything, so his output was limited.
“I dabbled into it a little bit, but then got kicked out. Again,” Rother said. “It was just like the whole entrance barrier was so big.”
Rother pursued graphic design at university and he found the first two years fulfilling, with a focus on classical art training. By the end of his schooling, though, the lessons covered practical applications like working with clients, and Rother’s vision of a graphic design career smashed into reality.
“There was an eye-opening moment where I felt like, this is not for me,” Rother said.
In between classes, Rother was still making games for himself and for jams like Ludum Dare, steadily building up his skillset and cementing his reputation in these spaces as a master of mood.
“Atmospheric kind of pieces, walking simulators,” Rother said, recalling his early projects. “Atmosphere was very interesting to me to explore. But I never thought that it was actually something that could turn into a game. I never thought that it would become something that can be sold in a way that it's actually a product.”
By the late 2010s Rother decided he was officially over graphic design and ready to try a job in game development. He applied to a bunch of studios and, in the meantime, picked up odd jobs at a supermarket and as a stagehand, setting up electronics. He eventually secured a gig as a 3D artist at a small studio in Berlin. Meanwhile, his pile of game jam projects and unfinished prototypes continued to grow.
“In that timeframe, Children of the Sun happened,” Rother said.
In Children of the Sun, players are The Girl, a woman who escaped the cult that raised her and is now enacting sniper-based revenge on all of its cells, one bullet at a time. In each round, players line up their shot and then control a single bullet as it ricochets through individual cult members. The challenge lies in finding the most speedy, efficient and stylish path of death, earning a spot at the top of the leaderboards.
“It was just a random prototype I started working on,” Rother said. “And one Saturday morning I was thinking, ‘I don't know what I'm doing with my life.'” With an atmospheric prototype and a head full of ennui, Rother emailed Devolver Digital that same day about potentially publishing Children of the Sun.
“The response was basically, ‘The pitch was shit but the game looks cool,’” Rother said. “And then it became a thing.”
Visually, Children of the Sun is dazzling. It has a sketchy 3D art style that’s covered in bruise tones, with dark treelines, glowing yellow enemies and layers of texture. Every scene looks like The Girl just took a hit of adrenaline and her senses are on high alert, lending a hectic sense of hyper-vigilance to the entire experience. It’s a game built on instinct.
“I didn't make any mood boards,” Rother said. “I didn't prepare [for] it. It was just like, oh, let's make it this color. Ah, let's make it this color…. This is something to very easily get lost in. I spent a lot of time just adjusting the color of grass so it works well with the otherwise purplish tones and these kinds of things. I spent way too much time on the colors.”
Children of the Sun went through multiple visual iterations where Rother played with contrast, depth, fog density and traditional FPS color palettes, before landing on the game’s dreamlike and neon-drenched final form. The residue of this trial and error is still visible beneath Children of the Sun’s frames, and that’s exactly how Rother likes it.
“I see it as a big compliment, actually,” he said. “In paintings, when we talk about visual art, I really like when you can see the brushstrokes. I like when you can still see the lines of the pencil before the painting got made. I like the roughness. I wanted everything to be rough. I didn't want it to be polished.”
Rother picked up the game’s soundtrack collaborator, experimental ambient composer Aidan Baker, the same way he hooked up with Devolver. Rother was a fan of Baker and his band Nadja, and he wanted a similar droning, slowcore vibe as a backdrop for Children of the Sun. On a whim, Rother sent Baker a casual message asking if he’d like to make music for a video game.
“He was like, ‘Well I've never done it, so I don't know,’” Rother remembered. “So we met one evening and then afterwards he was like, ‘Yeah, let's just do it.’ Instead of just emulating something that I like in the game, I somehow managed to get straight to the source of it. And that was a really nice experience.”
For Rother, Children of the Sun has been a lesson in trusting his gut. He hasn’t found the proper word in English or German to describe the atmosphere he created in the game, but it’s something close to melancholy, spiked with an intense coiled energy and bright, psychedelic clarity. He just knows that it feels right — visuals, music, mechanics and all.
“That's kind of how I live my life,” Rother said. “Not that I'm, like, super spontaneous or just flip-flopping around with opinions or these kinds of things. It's more about doing things that feel right to me without necessarily knowing why.”
When he booted up that Quake III demo disc and started making 3D vignettes for game jams, Rother didn’t realize he was building the path that would eventually lead him to a major publishing deal, a collaboration with a musician he admires, a big Steam release and a game about cult sniping called Children of the Sun. When Rother takes a moment to survey his current lot in life, he feels lucky, he said.
“I feel like in the last three years, somehow, lots of things fell into my lap,” Rother said. “Although I still had to do something for it. I needed to be prepared for this moment, that required work.… But in the time where I prepared myself, I was not aware that I was preparing myself. So that's how the feeling of luck gets amplified a bit more.”
“Luck” is one way to describe it, but “artistic instinct” might be just as fitting. Children of the Sun is available now on Steam for $15.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/it-took-20-years-for-children-of-the-sun-to-become-an-overnight-success-194511363.html?src=rssSource: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics | 18 Apr 2024 | 7:45 pm UTC
One day after Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., questioned Columbia University administrators about the mistreatment of students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, the school suspended Omar’s daughter and two other students for participating in a campus protest.
Omar’s questions to the administrators during a Wednesday congressional hearing on antisemitism at Columbia touched on the school’s response to students being sprayed with a chemical at a campus rally for Gaza and its policy surrounding professors harassing students online.
University President Nemat Minouche Shafik announced that two students were suspended in relation to the January protest and that a professor was under investigation for complaints over his social media posts about students.
During a hearing premised on the idea that there is rampant antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, Omar also got Shafik to say that there had been no protests targeting specific ethnic or religious groups — Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, or Jews.
“I think that the line of questioning which my mother asked was definitely a pressure for Columbia University,” said Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, who is a junior at Barnard College, Columbia’s women’s school.
Hirsi, who has been an active participant in campus protests over the war and said she hadn’t received any prior disciplinary warning, noted that other factors may have been at play too. “And then added pressure from me also giving interviews and people knowing that I am the daughter of her at the same time,” she told The Intercept.
On Thursday morning, Barnard sent interim suspension notices to Hirsi, Maryam Iqbal, and Soph Dinu for participating in an on-campus encampment that has rallied hundreds of students for over 24 hours. The demonstration began in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, ahead of the House Committee on Education and Workforce’s hearing on antisemitism at the school.
According to the notice, the trio had received “repeated requests from Barnard and Columbia” to leave the encampment on Wednesday.
“Barnard College,” the notice read, “has determined that your continued unauthorized encampment on the Columbia campus poses an ongoing threat of disruption to, or interference with, the normal operations of the College and the University.” Because of the suspension, the students are barred from residence halls, dining facilities, and classrooms while the full disciplinary process plays out.
The students told The Intercept that they had not received any warning other than the code of conduct warning flyers school officials distributed to the masses. (Asked about the suspensions, Barnard pointed to a public statement that said that senior staff members issued written warnings to protest participants at around 7 p.m. on Wednesday, warning them of interim suspension if they did not leave by 9 p.m. The school said that it would continue to place encampment participants on interim suspension as it identifies them.)
“They’re trying to get students too afraid to show up to protests.”
Iqbal noted that she, Hirsi, and Dinu have been visible participants in the protests and have made themselves available to media using their full names. She added that the school had previously identified her as an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine, which the school suspended last year, and had asked her about SJP activities in recent months.
Both Iqbal and Dinu have been involved in disciplinary discussions about their participation in protests, they said.
“I see the hearings as one of the many scare tactics the administration uses to try to divide and conquer us,” Dinu told The Intercept. “They’re trying to call in as many students as possible to try to get whatever information they can. They’re trying to get students to become scared and to share a bunch of information to try and target the movement. They’re trying to get students too afraid to show up to protests. But as we have seen, that does not work. It only serves to galvanize the student body more.”
The trio were at the January rally where a noxious chemical was sprayed, and Iqbal said she was among those who went to the hospital for treatment afterward. (In a pseudonymous lawsuit filed this week, a Columbia student said that he had sprayed a non-toxic gag spray “in the air — not directly at any individual.”)
During the Wednesday congressional hearing, Shafik publicly revealed for the first time that two students were suspended in relation to the incident. Hirsi noted that the university has been relatively quiet about that investigation, while it has quickly published information about unauthorized events held by students protesting the Gaza war.
“That is very scary and concerning about how the university plays out who deserves due process, who deserves to be publicly shamed, and who doesn’t.”
“We had no idea. I mean, we heard through the grapevine about their suspension, but no public correspondence about what had happened,” she said. “And I think that that is very scary and concerning about how the university plays out who deserves due process, who deserves to be publicly shamed, and who doesn’t.”
This week’s encampment was organized to “protest Columbia University’s continued financial investment in corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine,” organizers said. The demonstrators are calling for transparency for all of Columbia’s financial investments and amnesty for students involved “in the encampment or the movement for Palestinian liberation.”
Students, citing faculty senators, said the school has agreed to some form of greater investment transparency.
“We welcome an opportunity to discuss the topic of transparency with our community, and to hear where additional information would be impactful,” a Columbia spokesperson told The Intercept. “Students can follow an established process to request information about university investments.”
On Thursday afternoon, Shafik, “with great regret,” authorized the New York Police Department to clear out the protest site. Police arrested more than 100 people, a student group said in a statement.
One adjunct faculty member found the decision troubling, given that the school has its own public safety department ostensibly trained to help manage student and campus affairs.
“I was there yesterday and these students were literally just singing and chanting and handing out flyers,” said the professor, who requested anonymity out of concern for workplace reprisal. “Shouldn’t the cops have been required to disarm before entering campus to avoid possibility of accidental discharge or some other horrible thing?”
Update: April 18, 2024, 4:47 pm. ET
This article was updated to include information about arrests at the protest site as well as additional details from Barnard College’s statement about the suspensions.
The post Columbia Suspends Ilhan Omar’s Daughter One Day After Omar Grilled School Administrators appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 18 Apr 2024 | 7:41 pm UTC
Google has fired more than two dozen employees after they staged sit-ins at the web giant's offices in protest of its cloud contract with the Israeli government. …
Source: The Register | 18 Apr 2024 | 7:16 pm UTC
count: 242
