Roundcube, one of the best open-source web-based email clients around, has decided to team up with Nextcloud, a popular open-source collaboration platform that is known for its suite of collaboration tools.
The post Open-Source Webmail Roundcube Joins Nextcloud appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Open-Source Webmail Roundcube Joins Nextcloud
Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)
A federal judge has stopped a US state’s landmark ban on TikTok from going into effect, in an important test case for the widespread political backlash that has grown in the country against the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.
Montana’s Senate Bill 419, which was signed by the state’s Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, in May, would have gone into effect in January and imposed a ban on downloads of the app.
On Thursday, Judge Donald Molloy granted TikTok’s request for a preliminary injunction after the ByteDance-owned app challenged the legislation in court, denouncing it as an unconstitutional infringement of its rights. Some users of the app also joined the legal challenge.
Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Montana’s TikTok ban blocked by federal judge
Well folks, the final 31 days of 2023 are upon us. While I expect you’ll likely have picked out your personal game of the year already, there’s still time for some more games to hit physical and virtual shelves, and maybe one of them will be a nice send-off to a wild year of killer games.
Source: Kotaku – Say Goodbye To 2023 With December’s Game Releases
digiKam, the open-source, free, and cross-platform professional photo management software for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows, has been updated to version 8.2, a release that brings multiple bug fixes and updated core components.
Source: LXer – digiKam 8.2 Open-Source Photo Management App Is Now Available for Download
Grand Theft Auto VI’s trailer reveal is just days away. Rockstar Games confirmed it will finally show the much anticipated next game in the hit open-world franchise on December 5, indicating that it’s the first trailer of many.
Source: Kotaku – Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer Drops December 5
YouTube recently took dramatic action against anyone visiting its site with an ad blocker running — after a few pieces of content, it’ll simply stop serving you videos. If you want to get past the wall, that ad blocker will (probably) need to be turned off; and if you want an ad-free experience, better cough up a couple bucks for a Premium subscription.
Although this is an aggressive move that seemingly left ad blocking companies scrambling to respond, it didn’t come out the blue — YouTube had been testing something similar for months. And even before this most recent clampdown, the Google-owned video service has been engaged in an ongoing conflict — a game of cat-and-mouse, an arms race, pick your metaphor — with ad-blocking software: YouTube rolls out new ways to serve ads to viewers with ad blockers, then ad blockers develop new strategies to circumvent those ad-serving measures.
As noted in a blog post by the ad- and tracker-blocking company Ghostery, YouTube employs a wide variety of techniques to circumvent ad blockers, such as embedding an ad in the video itself (so the ad blocker can’t distinguish between the two), or serving ads from the same domain as the video, fooling filters that have been set up to block ads served from third-party domains.
It’s not that YouTube is alone in these efforts; many digital publishers make similar attempts to stymie ad blockers. To some extent, YouTube’s moves just get more attention because the service is so popular. As AdGuard CTO Andrey Meshkov put it in an email, “Even when they run a test on a share of users… the number of affected people is very high.”
At the same time, according to Ghostery’s director of product and engineering Krzysztof Modras, it’s also true that “as one of the world’s largest publishers, YouTube constantly invests in circumventing ad blocking.” And that those investments have been effective. Many of the most common ad blocking strategies, including DNS filtering (filtering for third-party domains), network filtering (which Modras described as “more selective” and better at blocking first-party requests) and cosmetic filtering (which can blocks ads without leaving ad-shaped holes in the website content) no longer work on the site.
Now, Modras said, YouTube seems to be “adapting [its] methods more frequently than ever before. To counteract its changes to ad delivery and ad blocker detection, block lists have to be updated at minimum on a daily basis, and sometimes even more often. While all players in the space are innovating, some ad blockers are simply unable to keep up with these changes.”
Keeping pace with YouTube will likely become even more challenging next year, when Google’s Chrome browser adopts the Manifest V3 standard, which significantly limits what extensions are allowed to do. Modras said that under Manifest V3, whenever an ad blocker wants to update its blocklist — again, something they may need to do multiple times a day — it will have to release a full update and undergo a review “which can take anywhere between [a] few hours to even a few weeks.”
“Through Manifest V3, Google will close the door for innovation in the ad blocking landscape and introduce another layer of gatekeeping that will slow down how ad blockers can react to new ads and online tracking methods,” he said.
For many users, the battle between YouTube and ad blockers has largely been invisible, or at least ignorable, until now. The new wall dramatically changes this dynamic, forcing users to adapt their behavior if they want to access YouTube videos at all. Still, the ad blocking companies suggest it’s more of a policy change than a technical breakthrough — a sign of a new willingness on YouTube’s part to risk alienating its users.
“It’s not that YouTube’s move is something new, many publishers went [down] this road already,” Meshkov said. “The difference is [the] scale of YouTube.” That scale affects both the number of users impacted, as well as the number of resources required to maintain these defenses on the publisher’s side. “Going this road is very, very expensive, it requires constant maintenance,” he added, “you basically need a team dedicated to this. There’s just a handful of companies that can afford it.”
As ever, ad blockers are figuring out how to adapt, even if it’s requiring more effort from their users, too. For example, Modras noted that “throughout much of October, Ghostery experienced three to five times the typical number of both uninstalls and installs per day, as well as a 30 percent increase in downloads on Microsoft Edge, where our ad blocker was still working on YouTube for a period of time.” All of this activity suggests that users are quickly cycling through different products and strategies to get around YouTube’s anti-ad block efforts, then discarding them when they stop working.
Meanwhile, uBlock Origin still seems to work on YouTube. But a detailed Reddit post outlining how to avoid tripping the platform’s ad-block detection measures notes that because “YouTube changes their detection scripts regularly,” users may still encounter the site’s pop-up warnings and anti-adblock wall in “brief periods of time” between script changes (on the platform’s end) or filter updates (on uBlock’s side.) uBlock Origin may also stop working on Chrome next year thanks to the aforementioned Manifest V3. And if you’re hoping to use it on a non-Chrome browser, Google has allegedly begun deprecating YouTube’s load times on alternate browsers, seemingly as part of the anti-ad block effort. While 404 Media and Android Authority, which both reported on this issue, were not able to replicate these artificially slowed load times, users were seemingly able to avoid them through the use of a “user-agent switcher,” which disguises one browser (say, Firefox) as another (in this case, Chrome).
Why do some ad blockers still work? The answer seems to boil down to a new approach: Scriptlet injection, which uses scripts to alter website behavior in a more fine-grained way. For example, Meshkov said an ad blocker could write a scriptlet to remove a cookie with a given name, or to stop the execution of JavaScript on a web page when it tries to access a page property with a given name.
On YouTube, Modras said, scriptlets can alter the data being loaded before it’s used by the page script. For example, a scriptlet might look for specific data identifiers and remove them, making this approach “subtle enough” to block ads that have been mixed in with website functionality, without affecting the functionality.
Scriptlet injection also plays a role in an increasingly crucial part of the ad blocker’s job: escaping detection. AdGuard’s Meshkov said this is something that teams like his are already working on, since they try escape detection as a general rule — both by avoiding activity that would alert a website to their presence, and by using scriptlets to prevent common fingerprinting functions that websites use to detect ad blockers.
Scriptlet injection seems to be the most promising approach right now — in fact, Modras described it as currently “the only reliable way of ad blocking on YouTube.”
Meshkov said that assessment is accurate if you limit yourself to browser extensions (which is how most popular ad blockers are distributed). But he pointed to network-level ad blockers and alternative YouTube clients, such as NewPipe, as other approaches that can work. A recent AdGuard blog post outlined additional other steps that users can try, such as checking for filter updates, making sure multiple ad blockers aren’t installed and using a desktop ad-blocking app, which should be harder to detect than an extension. (AdGuard itself offers both network-level blocking and desktop apps.)
At least one popular ad blocker, AdBlock Plus, won’t be trying to get around YouTube’s wall at all. Vergard Johnsen, chief product officer at AdBlock Plus developer eyeo, said he respects YouTube’s decision to start “a conversation” with users about how content gets monetized.
Referencing the now independently run Acceptable Ads program (which eyeo created and participates in), Johnsen said, “the vast majority of our users have really embraced the fact that there will be ads […] we’ve made it clear we don’t believe in circumvention.”
Similarly, a YouTube spokesperson reiterated that the platform’s ads support “a diverse ecosystem of creators globally” and that “the use of ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service.”
As the battle between YouTube and ad blockers continues, Modras suggested that his side has at least one major advantage: They’re open source and can draw on knowledge from the broader community.
“Scriptlet injection is already getting more powerful, and it’s becoming harder for anti-ad blockers to detect,” he said. “In some ways, the current situation has spurred an arms race. YouTube has inadvertently improved ad blockers, as the new knowledge and techniques gained from innovating within the YouTube platform are also applicable to other ad and tracking systems.”
But even if most users grow frustrated with the new countermeasures and decide to whitelist YouTube in their ad block product of choice, Modras suggested that ad blockers can still affect the platform’s bottom line: “If users disable ad blocking on only YouTube and maintain their protection on other websites as they browse, the platform will quickly learn that they are still unable to effectively target ads to these users,” since it won’t have data about user activity on those other sites.
Regardless of what YouTube does next, he suggested that other publishers are unlikely to build a similar wall, because few if any services enjoy the same chokehold on an entire media ecosystem — not only owning the most popular video sharing service, but also the most popular web browser on which to view it. “YouTube is in a unique position as it is de facto a monopoly,” he said. “That’s not true for most of the other publishers.”
Even against those odds, ad block diehards aren’t dissuaded in their mission. As Andrey Meshkov put it bluntly: “YouTube’s policy is just a good motivation to do it better.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/inside-the-arms-race-between-youtube-and-ad-blockers-140031824.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Inside the ‘arms race’ between YouTube and ad blockers
Experienced gardeners in parts of the country with cold, potentially snowy winters don’t mess around when it comes to frost. Over time, they figure out when to plant certain fruits and vegetables so they’re ready to harvest well before the first frost of the season.
These gardeners also know that there are hardier vegetables that have a more flexible schedule and can stay in the ground a bit longer. Whether the first frost happens unusually early, or they want to harvest their crops gradually instead of having to store all of them at once, the following veggies aren’t bothered by a bit of winter weather. In fact, some of them taste even better after the first frost. Let’s dig in.
This will depend on a variety of factors, including your local climate—which traditionally has dictated the types of vegetables that have been grown outdoors—and the increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. In other words, a plant that’s able to survive a frost in one part of the country may not make it in another. But generally speaking, here are some examples of veggies that can be harvested after a frost, broken down by category:
Because vegetables like carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, and beets grow (mostly) underground, they have some protection from the frost, Gretchen Voyle, a horticulture educator at the Michigan State University Extension, writes in a university news release. While frost itself only affects the garden’s surface, things change after the ground freezes. Once that happens, these root vegetables will be damaged, if not killed.
The other factor to consider is the moisture of the soil, Voyle explains. These veggies are fine if the ground is damp and not frozen, but if the soil is too wet, they can rot.
Also, don’t worry if the green tops of root vegetables like carrots, parsnips, and beets don’t survive a frost, says Jim Myers, a plant breeder and researcher at the Oregon State University Extension Service. They may die, but as long as the ground doesn’t freeze or get too wet, the actual roots—the main parts we eat—will still be alive.
Spuds are a special case, according to Voyle, because while they can be harvested after a frost, they must be removed from the garden almost immediately after they are dug. If potatoes are left sitting on the soil’s surface for even a short amount of time, they may start developing a poisonous chemical called solanine, which also turns them a sickly green. If someone eats enough solanine, Voyle says it could lead to gastrointestinal and neurological disorders.
While leaf lettuces won’t survive a frost, hardier greens like kale, collards, and Swiss chard will, Voyle explains. Not only that, but they may get slightly sweeter following a light frost.
You can also harvest red and green ball cabbages, as well as their cousins kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts, after a frost—though you may need to remove some of the outer leaves if they’re damaged, according to both Voyle and Myers. Similarly, if you realize that the leaves of any of these greens have gotten tough to chew, cooking will soften them up.
Source: LifeHacker – You Can Still Harvest These Vegetables After a Frost
If you’ve been meaning to pick up an Xbox Series X but weren’t able to grab one on Black Friday, good news: Walmart has a bundle that pairs the powerful console with a digital copy of the (divisive) action-RPG Diablo IV for $349. That’s the largest discount we’ve tracked and a full $151 off the Series X’s normal going rate. The game, meanwhile, normally goes for $70. This deal also tops the best deals we’ve seen for the device over the past week; on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this bundle mostly sat at $440.
If the bundle runs out of stock — and given the extent of the discount, we expect it will fairly quickly — Walmart also has the console alone on sale for that same $349. Again, though, you’ll likely want to move fast to secure the deal.
As a refresher, the Series X is the highest-end model of the two current Xboxes; it packs a stronger GPU and 6GB more RAM than the entry-level Series S, allowing it to play demanding games at higher frame rates and resolutions more consistently. It also comes with a disc drive and 1TB of storage as default. Microsoft has had some struggles producing first-party hits, but the Xbox library is still home to plenty of titles we like, and Xbox Game Pass remains one of the better values in gaming if you like to sample a wide range of games. It’s worth noting the massive leak earlier this year that included details of a potential Series X refresh, which may arrive in 2024, but the current system remains a strong value when it’s discounted to this extent.
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/the-xbox-series-x-is-down-to-just-349-right-now-133430874.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The Xbox Series X is down to just 9 right now
No one can fault a latke; fried potatoes in oil are going to be delicious no matter what form they take, but I don’t particularly enjoy when recipes for foods specific to Jewish holidays stray too far from the path. I’ve recently seen recipes for wild variations that are no longer majority potato and oil and have thought, “Hmm, not a lot of latke.”
However, within the confines of the tater-oil relationship, there’s some room to play, and red flannel latkes are a good way to add color and a little sweetness to this traditional, religious dish. While the hill I’ll die on is latke-shaped and made of potato, oil, onion, and some egg, a little color isn’t going to hurt. The addition of celery root and beets give these latkes some body and a beautiful, rich color and are the source of the “red flannel” moniker. You can make them on their own or alongside their more traditional brethren.
There are many great thinkpieces on whether it is necessary to hand-grate your potatoes or use a food processor, the idea being that grating by hand will result in more consistent threads of potato, which then results in lacier latkes. I say these folks need more food processor training. If you use a shredding disk on your machine, the key is to use long chunks of vegetable that fit in the feeder tube of the chute that you push through rapidly, resulting in long shreds. When you simply throw vegetables into the chute, bypassing the feeder tube, the vegetables fall horizontally and end up getting macerated against the disk. You certainly can hand grate, I just don’t have the will.
Regardless, you’ll take your potatoes, beet, celery root, and onion (all peeled and broken down into long pieces that will fit into the chute) and pass them through the feeder tube as quickly as possible.
The goal is to remove as much moisture as possible from the shredded vegetables, and I’m afraid draining alone isn’t going to get it done.
Dump everything out into a colander and mix it by hand so all the vegetables are combined. The vegetables will all take on a beautiful ruby color from the beets. Sprinkle two tablespoons of salt over the vegetables and mix it through. Leave the colander in the sink for twenty minutes to drain. That step alone isn’t really enough: to get out all the moisture, take a clean tea towel, dump the vegetables into it, and roll up the towel lengthwise. Twist both ends until tight, over the sink, and then keep twisting. This should put pressure on the vegetables, which will release even more moisture. Repeat this a few times. When no more moisture comes out, spread the vegetables in a flat layer onto a clean cookie sheet lined with paper towels and let it dry. I like to aim a fan at it and leave everything alone for 20 minutes. If you’re pressed for time, you can skip some of these steps to dry the vegetables, but it’ll affect how crispy you can get the latkes.
Now it’s time to add the binder, which is just an egg. Some recipes call for flour or breadcrumbs, but an egg is enough. Make sure it is well incorporated, mixing everything together in the colander.
The only thing left to do is cook these latkes up. In as large a fry pan as you have, add an inch of vegetable oil. While olive oil is the traditional holiday oil, it has too low of a burn point. Vegetable oil will tolerate those higher temperatures that will result in lacy latkes. Over a medium-high heat, allow the oil to come to a temperature high enough that a droplet of water will sizzle and dance. Add the peeled garlic cloves; they’re just there to flavor the oil.
Take a heaping tablespoon of latke mix and drop it into the oil. It will form an irregular shape, but should hold together. The pan should accommodate three or four latkes at a time, so continue making them until the pan is full. Flipping a latke is serious business. Do it too soon and the thing will fall apart; do it too late and it’s going to burn. Check your latkes by peeking underneath them, and as soon as they turn golden, flip them. It’s OK to use two spatulas to do so, so you’re not splashing oil around. Do not try to use tongs; these are delicate and will fall apart. You want to turn them over as delicately as possible.
Once they are golden brown on the second side, it’s time to pull the latke out with the spatula and relocate it to some paper towels on a plate where it can dry off.
Here’s where I differ from others. I like to give the latkes a second fry in the oil once they’ve all been through once. Double frying potatoes is a long held way to get really crispy exteriors, and with the beet and celery root addition, I find that the second fry really gets the latkes from a little crispy to crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. I’ve tried an air fryer at this point, but found it dried the latkes out too much for my liking. Once the latkes come out of the second fry and have drained on paper towels, you can serve them immediately, or keep them warm on a cookie sheet in a 350-degree oven for about an hour, or let them cool and freeze them flat.
To keep things traditional, serve these latkes with sour cream or applesauce.
(based on the New York Times recipe)
Ingredients
2 medium-sized gold potatoes
1 medium-sized beet
1 small celery root
1 medium-sized sweet yellow onion
1 egg
Salt and pepper
4 cloves garlic
1 cup vegetable oil
Peel the potatoes, beet, celery root, and onion and cut everything into long chunks small enough to fit through the feeding tube of the food processor chute.
Using the shredding disk on your food processor, push the vegetables through quickly.
Dump everything into a strainer and mix together thoroughly. Sprinkle in two tablespoons of salt and mix again, then leave to drain in the sink for twenty minutes.
Place all the vegetables into a clean tea towel, roll it up and wring as much as possible, two or three times, until you’ve gotten as much moisture out of the vegetables as you can.
Lay out the vegetables on a cookie sheet lined with paper towels and allow to air dry, optimally in front of a fan, for at least 20 minutes. Throw the vegetables back into the colander and mix thoroughly with one egg.
Heat an inch of vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add a droplet or two of water to the oil. When the water starts to sizzle, the oil is ready. Add your garlic cloves.
Drop a heaping tablespoon of latke mix into the oil, and then repeat as many times as the pan will fit. Check the latkes for a golden color on the bottom, and then carefully, using two spatulas, gently flip the latkes and fry until golden brown on the other side.
Remove the latkes to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain. Once you’ve completed all the latkes, give them a second fry using the same method. This time, wait for them to come to a deeper brown, but watch them closely so they don’t burn. Remove them and place them on a clean paper-towel-lined plate and serve immediately. You can keep them hot in the oven on 350F in a single layer on a cookie sheet for an hour if necessary.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Make Extra Crispy Red Flannel Latkes
NASA and IBM are building an AI model for weather and climate applications, combining their knowledge and skills in earth science and AI. They say the foundation model (more on that in a bit) should offer “significant advantages over existing technology.” Current AI models, such as GraphCast and FourCastNet, are already generating weather forecasts more quickly than traditional meteorological models. As IBM notes, those are AI emulators rather than foundation models. AI emulators can make weather predictions based on sets of training data, but they don’t have applications beyond that.
The model may predict meteorological phenomena better, inferring high-res information based on low-res data and “identifying conditions conducive to everything from airplane turbulence to wildfires.”
— Mat Smith
Steam’s streaming software now lets you wirelessly play PC VR games on Quest headsets
Bipartisan Senate bill would kill the TSA’s Big Brother airport facial recognition
Tesla’s long-awaited Cybertruck will start at $60,990 before rebates
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Evernote’s new, tightly leashed plan will restrict new and current accounts to 50 notes and one notebook. Existing free customers who exceed those limits can still use their notes, but they’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to create new ones. Evernote’s premium plans include a $15 monthly Personal plan with 10GB of monthly uploads. That’s a pricey subscription for what is dedicated note cloud storage. When Evernote’s parent company, Bending Spoons, moved its operations from the US and Chile to Europe, it said the app had been “unprofitable for years.” That push into socks didn’t work.
Meta says the government “paused” in July briefings related to foreign election interference, eliminating a key source of information for the company. During a call with reporters, Meta’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, declined to speculate on the government’s motivations, but the timing lines up with a court order earlier this year that restricted the Biden Administration’s contact with social media firms.
The disclosure comes as the company ramps up its efforts to prepare for multiple elections in 2024, and the inevitable attempts to manipulate political conversations on Facebook. The company said in its latest report on CIB that China is now the third-most common source of coordinated inauthentic behavior on its platform, behind Russia and Iran.
Google is rolling out a string of updates for the Messages app, including customizable text bubbles and background colors. So, if you really want, you can have blue bubbles in your Android messaging app. You can even have a different color for each chat, which could help prevent you from telling the wrong thing to the wrong person. But none of this means nothing to iPhone users and has nothing to do with the prolonged toing and froing on text message compatibility.
ChatGPT exploded in popularity, from niche online curio to 100 million monthly active users — the fastest user base growth in the history of the internet. In less than a year, it has earned the backing of Silicon Valley’s biggest firms, as well as being shoehorned into myriad applications from academia and the arts to marketing, medicine, gaming and government. ChatGPT is just about everywhere. Engadget’s Andrew Tarantola looks at the blazing first year of OpenAI’s chatbot.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-nasa-and-ibm-team-up-for-powerful-ai-weather-model-121532358.html?src=rssOpenAI’s old board of directors made a huge mistake and nearly destroyed the company. Had it not been able to reverse that position, the resulting litigation would have likely destroyed each of the board members, showcasing how incredibly foolish their decision was.
But now OpenAI is a wounded company. There’s a cloud of distrust both internally and externally that will need to be overcome, a new Board selected and the brand recovered.
Let’s talk about how that can be done.
Boards are often taken for granted and are poorly staffed by people that are either unqualified or are unable to work with each other. The result is a company that underperforms. OpenAI’s past board was both too small and made up of people who didn’t understand their role which is to prioritize the health of the company over nearly all else. They also clearly didn’t understand the potential liability that goes with the role.
In building a new board for OpenAI (now expected to be a more diverse nine-member group), care should be taken to assure that each of the major potential customer groups are represented by board members (retail, pharma, legal, government, manufacturing, marketing, sales, military and healthcare). Each should also have some background in AI as applied to their individual industries as they will then be better able to assist the CEO in their efforts to grow the company.
The government-focused member must be influential and, much like Al Gore did for Apple, not provide insight into the unique needs of government so much as have influence with government so that any resulting legislation doesn’t adversely impact the company.
In addition, board members should not be selected based on personal fame but on their competence and willingness to collaborate to reach common solutions. Too many boards tend to be made up of people who want to lead but not follow, making them functionally unable to perform their critical duties.
The chairman of the board should either be one of the founders of the company or be someone with mediation experience so that they can help the board drive collaborative conclusions. To keep with the times, the board should also be diverse, but diversity shouldn’t take the place of competence and the willingness to collaborate.
Trust is hard to create, easy to lose and very difficult to recover. Part of rebuilding trust will be to make the board and executive team visible and to ensure there are no other major mistakes made by either company leadership or the board. In addition, OpenAI should staff a marketing function if only to take stronger control over the firm’s public image and to dispel any lingering doubt that the firm can execute.
AI is an incredibly competitive environment. If trust isn’t restored, employee turnover and customer defections will be high, and the firm’s competitive position as a market leader will erode rapidly in the face of firms that appear to have their act together.
Appear is the operative word here. The sooner OpenAI “appears” to have its act together again, the sooner any bleeding of employees or customers can be arrested, and the firm returned to its growth trajectory.
People are connecting the brand to the recent drama, which is creating doubt about OpenAI’s future. Restoring the brand as the fastest growing AI company would significantly increase the probability that the firm will return to that prior success.
Open AI is the current leader in generative AI which is the current hottest AI category. However, competition is fierce, and the past board temporarily crippled the company. But this has created an opportunity to create a stronger board, a better defended brand, and to actively work on restoring and sustaining trust with marketing.
The company is well funded. If it can create a larger, more diverse and collaborative board and build a marketing program that can better husband OpenAI’s image, there is no reason why the company can not only return to its prior growth trajectory but exceed it.
Now it is just a question of execution.
Source: TG Daily – OpenAI: Rebuilding the Brand, the Board and Restoring Trust
Enlarge / Imagery from Europe’s Sentinel-2 satellite shows the aftermath of an explosion on a test stand at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. (credit: Sentinel Hub EO Browser/CC BY 4.0)
Welcome to Edition 6.21 of the Rocket Report!
Someone is always watching, and it’s more difficult than ever to hide bad news. This is one of my mantras as a reporter who will always come down on the side of transparency. We’ve seen space companies and government agencies in the United States try to downplay setbacks, which, let’s face it, are inevitable in the space business. In China, it looks like a recent test-firing of a rocket motor didn’t go well. Unsurprisingly, Chinese officials haven’t said a thing.
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.
Read 23 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Rocket Report: A mysterious explosion in China; Firefly tests new engine
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series offer great performance out-of-the-box for Linux desktop/workstation users as shown in my Ryzen Threadripper 7970X and 7980X benchmarks along with the Threadripper PRO 7995WX. While a more common tunable on the EPYC side, the Threadripper 7000 series can also benefit from Nodes Per Socket (NPS) / Sub-NUMA Clustering (SNC) tuning for enhancing the performance of some workloads. In this article is a look at dozens of benchmarks while looking at the performance impact of SNC2/SNC4 adjustments for the Zen 4 Threadripper.
Source: Phoronix – SNC/NPS Tuning For Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Series To Further Boost Performance
We test drive the OpenMandriva Lx 5 “Iodine”, the latest release that combines user-friendliness with cutting-edge technology.
Source: LXer – OpenMandriva Lx 5 Review: Distribution of Simplicity and Power
If you recently moved into a new place or are just looking to update your home’s security, now’s a good time to do so. Though Black Friday has come and gone, Blink’s video doorbell and two fourth-generation outdoor smart security cameras bundle is currently on sale for $100 (the devices add up to $315 if bought separately). There’s a small catch, though: the deal is only available to Prime Members.
While Prime Members had access to a similar deal back in September, this time around, the two Blink outdoor cameras included are the fourth-generation model. The cameras offer better image quality and low-light sensitivity. They also have an expanded field of vision, 143 degrees compared to their predecessor’s 110 degrees. The cameras should function for two years before the battery needs replacing. The bundle includes six double AA lithium batteries, along with one Sync Module 2, one USB cable, three mounting kits and a power adapter.
Blink’s outdoor camera and video doorbell both allow you to hear and speak with whoever is outside. You can also use the doorbell wirelessly by setting up in-app chimes or with a Blink Mini indoor camera. Otherwise, you can choose to hook it up to your existing system. You can store any clips from these devices in the cloud with a 30-day trial of the Blink Subscription Plan included. After that, Blink Plus will cost you $100 annually.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/prime-members-can-buy-a-blink-video-doorbell-and-two-outdoor-cameras-for-100-103504782.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Prime members can buy a Blink Video Doorbell and two Outdoor Cameras for 0
November was very busy on Phoronix with all of the benchmarking around the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series, the much anticipated Framework 13 laptop review, a lot of Wayland accomplishments being made this week, excitement building around the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.0 desktop release, and the Linux 6.7 kernel getting underway with new features like the Bcachefs file-system…
Source: Phoronix – Threadripper 7000 Series, Wayland, Linux 6.7 & Other November Highlights
In an unexpected move, Nextcloud announces the addition of Roundcube Webmail to its growing family of open-source solutions. Here’s more on that!
Source: LXer – Roundcube Webmail Joins the Nextcloud Family
Valve released today a new stable Steam Client update that brings various improvements for Linux gamers, as well as a couple of new features and numerous bug fixes.
Source: LXer – Latest Steam Client Update Improves Steam Overlay for CS2 and Other Games on Linux
The Space Weather Prediction Center is closely watching the arrival of a super-hot plasma eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), that will slam into Earth tonight, writes longtime Slashdot reader StyleChief. Images of the huge sunspot “rotating to face the earth” can be viewed here. The Space Weather Prediction Center reports: With 3 CMEs already inbound, the addition of a 4th, full halo CME has prompted SWPC forecasters to upgrade the G2 Watch on 01 Dec to a G3 Watch. This faster-moving halo CME is progged to merge with 2 of the 3 upstream CMEs, all arriving at Earth on 01 Dec. G3 (Strong) conditions are now likely on 01 Dec. Continue to monitor spaceweather.gov for the latest updates. “The rapid Earth-bound CME left the sun on Nov. 29 during a powerful M9.8-class solar flare eruption,” reports Space.com. “But it isn’t alone.”
“The speedy plasma outburst will merge with several slower upstream CMEs that left the sun a day earlier (Nov. 28), creating a ‘Cannibal CME’ that will likely trigger a strong geomagnetic storm akin to a Nov. 5 event that supercharged auroras and STEVE around the world.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – A Strong Solar Storm Is Inbound With a Full Halo CME
Following good progress in October and this former-Mozilla browser engine project receiving funding recently for “table” support, Servo developers continued implementing more functionality over the course of November…
Source: Phoronix – Servo Browser Engine Continues On Its Path To Be Embed-Friendly
