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Westliche Mächte haben sich hunderte Jahre lang in Chinas Angelegenheiten eingemischt. Menschenrechte und Demokratie galten als moralische Grundlage dafür. Warum das heute nicht mehr funktioniert.
NeurIPS 2022 honors MineDojo for playing Minecraft when instructed by written prompts.
Enlarge / MineDojo's AI can perform complex tasks in Minecraft. (credit: Nvidia)
A paper describing MineDojo, Nvidia's generalist AI agent that can perform actions from written prompts in Minecraft, won an Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Paper Award at the 2022 NeurIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) conference, Nvidia revealed on Monday.
To train the MineDojo framework to play Minecraft, researchers fed it 730,000 Minecraft YouTube videos (with more than 2.2 billion words transcribed), 7,000 scraped webpages from the Minecraft wiki, and 340,000 Reddit posts and 6.6 million Reddit comments describing Minecraft gameplay.
From this data, the researchers created a custom transformer model called MineCLIP that associates video clips with specific in-game Minecraft activities. As a result, someone can tell a MineDojo agent what to do in the game using high-level natural language, such as "find a desert pyramid" or "build a nether portal and enter it," and MineDojo will execute the series of steps necessary to make it happen in the game.
New branding is more consistent with older 1070 and 2070-series GPUs.
Enlarge (credit: Nvidia)
Last month, Nvidia took the unusual step of "unlaunching" a previously announced product. The 12GB version of the GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card was, by the company's admission, "not named right" and was delayed and rebranded to avoid confusion with the 16GB version of the RTX 4080 that launched. Besides having less RAM, the 12GB version of the RTX 4080 also offered less memory bandwidth and fewer GPU cores than the 16GB version.
Nvidia didn't announce exactly what branding it would use for the revived RTX 4080, but regulatory filings submitted by Gigabyte (as reported by VideoCardz) suggest that the company has settled on calling it the "4070 Ti."
This isn't guaranteed to be the actual name—regulatory filings like this can be placeholders rather than actual products—but this branding would be more consistent with how Nvidia has named past GPU generations. The xx80 cards usually use the same physical GPU die as the flagship xx90 cards but run at lower clock speeds and with parts of the die switched off; this allows Nvidia to use GPU dies with defects rather than tossing them out. The xx70 cards generally use a smaller, less-performant GPU die based on the same architecture.
Comcast’s advertised prices don’t include ever-rising Broadcast TV and sports fees.
Enlarge / Comcast service van parked on residential street in Lafayette, California, September 28, 2021. (credit: Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado )
The Comcast "Broadcast TV" fee that isn't included in the company's advertised prices is rising again, tacking as much as $27 onto the monthly bills of cable TV users. Comcast's Broadcast TV and Regional Sports Network fees combined could add nearly $40 to a customer's monthly TV bill after next month's price hikes, all while Comcast advertises much lower prices than people actually pay.
"Comcast has started notifying customers and municipalities that it plans to raise video and Internet prices next month, including a whopping $7.35 a month increase for the Broadcast TV fee in one town," a TV Answer Man article said on Saturday. The $7.35-per-month increase is in Taunton, Massachusetts, where Comcast said the Broadcast TV fee will rise from $18.65 to $26.
The Broadcast TV fee is rising from $24.95 a month to $27.25 a month starting on December 20 in Sandown, New Hampshire, a letter from Comcast to town government officials said. In Sandown, the Regional Sports Network fee is rising from $11.85 to $12.
The Pimax Portal is a portable game system that tries to be a little bit of everything. At its most basic level, it’s an Android tablet with detachable game controllers. But thanks to a series of optional accessories, you can also use it as a vi…
The Pimax Portal is a portable game system that tries to be a little bit of everything. At its most basic level, it’s an Android tablet with detachable game controllers. But thanks to a series of optional accessories, you can also use it as a virtual reality headset or a console that connects to a TV. First […]
The post Pimax Portal crowfunding campaign begins (handheld game system with detachable controllers and VR headset mount) appeared first on Liliputing.
P2P release group EVO has built quite a reputation for being the first to release pirated copies of screeners and popular movies online. The group is well-known for its steady and prolific release schedule, but last Friday things went quiet. EVO’s mysterious absence fuels rumors of a potential bust, but nothing is confirmed thus far.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Day in and day out, dozens of new movies and TV shows leak online. It’s become so normal that most pirates take it for granted.
While millions of people consume this content, only a few people know who supplies it. This secrecy is much needed, as members of release groups risk criminal prosecution and multi-year prison sentences.
This threat became salient again a few days ago when prolific release group EVO stopped sharing new uploads. A few days or even weeks between releases is normal for many groups but for EVO it’s highly unusual. The potential for something serious happening behind the scenes is certainly not out of the question.
Another factor to consider is that EVO is not alone; release group iFT has also stopped uploading new content recently. Both groups are connected to private torrent trackers where they release content first so their unexplained absence has quite a few people worried.
Over the past few days we have seen a wide variety of anonymous rumors and claims. According to some, EVO has been busted, but there is no evidence that officially confirms that. The only thing we know for sure is that EVO is a prime target for Hollywood and that carries risks.
Despite its high profile, EVO hasn’t shunned the piracy limelight in recent years. The P2P release group has leaked many prominent movies, including advance screener copies of “Nomadland”, “Uncut Gems” “The Power of the Dog“ and “My Salinger Year”.
While some groups prefer to stay away from screener leaks because of the inherent risks, EVO has repeatedly claimed first place when ‘screener piracy season’ begins.
The group was also responsible for publishing an early Blu-Ray copy of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’. In addition, it shared “Dune” with its pirate audience before the film was available via HBO Max and US theaters.
When we interviewed the group a few months ago, they told us that money isn’t their motivation. EVO said that they leaked movies “for fun” and to help people with limited means.
“We don’t get any profit at all from this ‘hobby’. We do it for fun,” EVO informed us, adding that they like to help people. “We know we are helping lots of people that can’t afford to go to theaters.”
EVO also pointed a finger at Hollywood for making it quite expensive for people to enjoy films. EVO suggested that increased fragmentation of the streaming landscape, with every service pushing its own exclusive releases, helps to keep piracy relevant.
“Maybe, if studios would care a bit more about the consumer, there wouldn’t be much piracy on the internet. But they don’t care anymore, what matters is profit, profit and profit.
“If you are an average person these days, basically, either you are rich or you are fucked. It’s Disney+, its Netflix, its Prime, its Paramount+. God knows what else they come up with,” EVO added.
TorrentFreak reached out to EVO over the weekend but the group didn’t respond. This means that the mystery and rumors will likely continue, at least until the group returns or more information becomes available.
There is no evidence to confirm that law enforcement is involved in any way but if that’s the case, it wouldn’t be the first time that a release group has been brought down.
Two years ago, U.S. law enforcement indicted several members of the Scene release group SPARKS. This action spooked the entire Scene and to date has resulted in the conviction of one member.
In 2011, the notorious IMAGiNE movie piracy group was dismantled by the feds. The group released large numbers of movies onto the Internet, many of which were still playing in theaters.
This attracted the attention of the MPA which launched an investigation. This led to the arrest and prosecution of four U.S. residents, who received sentences ranging from 23 months up to five years in prison.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Twitter faces scrutiny for relying too much on automated content removal.
This weekend, widespread protests erupted in China in what amounted to “the biggest show of opposition to the ruling Communist Party in decades,” AP News reported. Many protesters attempted to document events live to spread awareness and inspire solidarity across Twitter. Demonstrations were so powerful that Chinese authorities actually seemed to cave, appeasing some of the protesters’ demands by easing the severe lockdown restrictions that sparked the protests.
This could have been a moment that showed how Twitter under Elon Musk is still a relevant breaking-news source, still a place where free speech demonstrations reach the masses, and thus, still the only place to track escalating protests like these. Instead, The Washington Post reported that a flood of “useless tweets” effectively buried live footage from protests. This blocked users from easily following protest news, while Twitter seemingly did nothing to stop what researchers described as an apparent Chinese influence operation.
For hours, these tweets dropped Chinese city names where protests occurred into posts that were mostly advertising pornography and adult escort services. And it worked, preventing users attempting to search city names in Chinese from easily seeing updates on the protests. Researchers told The Post that the tweets were posted from a range of Chinese-language accounts that hadn’t been used for months or even years. The tweets began appearing early Sunday, shortly after protesters started calling for Communist Party leaders to resign.
The optimal splash-reducing angle for the average human is approximately 30 degrees.
Enlarge / Can you spot the urinal design with the optimal splash-reducing angle? It's the one second from right. (credit: Mia Shi/University of Waterloo)
Scientists at the University of Waterloo have determined the optimal design for a splash-free urinal: a tall, slender porcelain structure with curves reminiscent of a nautilus shell, playfully dubbed the "Nauti-loo." That's good news for men tired of having urine splash onto their pants and shoes—and for the poor souls who have to regularly clean up all the splatter. Bonus: It's quite an aesthetically appealing design, giving this workhorse of the public restroom a touch of class.
“The idea originated exactly where you think it did,” Waterloo's Zhao Pan told New Scientist. “I think most of us have been a little inattentive at our post and looked down to find we were wearing speckled pants. Nobody likes having pee everywhere, so why not just create a urinal where splatter is extremely unlikely?” His graduate student, Kaveeshan Thurairajah, presented the results of this research during last week's American Physical Society (APS) meeting on fluid dynamics in Indianapolis.
It's not the first time scientists have attempted to address this issue. Pan is a former graduate student of Tadd Truscott, a mechanical engineer who founded the so-called "Splash Lab" at Utah State University. In 2013, the Splash Lab (then at Brigham Young University) offered a few handy tips on how men could avoid staining their khaki pants with urine splashback while relieving themselves in restrooms. "Sitting on the toilet is the best technique, since there’s less distance for the pee to cover on its journey to the bowl," I wrote previously at Gizmodo. "If you opt for the classic standing technique, the scientists advised standing as close to the urinal as possible, and trying to direct the stream at a downward angle toward the back of the urinal."
Project Zero calls out Android and Pixel for not fixing a GPU vulnerability.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Google's "Project Zero" team of security analysts wants to rid the world of zero-day security vulnerabilities, and that means it spends time calling out slacking companies on its blog. The group's latest post is a bit of friendly fire aimed at the Android and Pixel teams, which Project Zero says aren't dealing with bugs in the ARM GPU driver quickly enough.
In June, Project Zero researcher Maddie Stone detailed an in-the-wild exploit for the Pixel 6, where bugs in the ARM GPU driver could let a non-privileged user get write access to read-only memory. Another Project Zero researcher, Jann Horn, spent the next three weeks finding related vulnerabilities in the driver. The post says these bugs could allow "an attacker with native code execution in an app context [to] gain full access to the system, bypassing Android's permissions model and allowing broad access to user data."
Project Zero says it reported these issues to ARM "between June and July 2022" and that ARM fixed the issues "promptly" in July and August, issuing a security bulletin (CVE-2022-36449) and publishing fixed source code. But these actively exploited vulnerabilities haven't been patched for users. The groups dropping the ball are apparently Google and various Android OEMs, as Project Zero says that months after ARM fixed the vulnerabilities, "all of our test devices which used Mali are still vulnerable to these issues. CVE-2022-36449 is not mentioned in any downstream security bulletins."
Employees hit with overdraft fees after paychecks fail to show up on schedule.
Enlarge / Payslip (credit: tattywelshie)
Twitter is investigating why some staff in Europe have not received their November salaries in a timely manner amid sweeping cuts and layoffs across the company since Elon Musk’s takeover.
Twitter staff in the UK received an email just before 1 pm London time on November 25 telling them their pay date would be November 28. Alongside the email, sent from the EMEA Payroll Team, staff received their usual monthly payslips. However, staff in the UK and Germany appear not to have been paid on time.
“It has come to our attention that some of you may not have received your November 2022 salary yet in your bank account,” an email sent to current and former staff reads. “The payments have gone through our Twitter bank account, and as usual, with no change to the process.”
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