Posted by Joe Moore from The Toyark
Blitzway has updated with more information, and lots of new photos for their upcoming 5Pro Carbotix Disney Figures. Specific scale isn’t mentioned, but the figures appear to be roughly 6″ tall (depending on character). The first three figures are Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Stitch. Each figure contains diecast metal parts, ratchet joints, interchangeable parts, multiple swap out hands, and more. Also, each figure has a unique LED light up feature. Pre-orders are not yet live, and pricing has not been revealed. You can check out the new photos and some additional product info by reading on. “BLITZWAY would like
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New Photos and Details for the Carbotix Mickey Mouse, Stitch, and Donald Duck by Blitzway appeared first on
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Posted by from MMO Champion
Blizzard on Hotfixing Mythic Halondrus Visual Bugs
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
After weeks of this being a top priority for our encounter and QA teams, we’ve solved this and fixed it.
Some background
Starting on June 10, in a portion of the Halondrus encounter, multiple abilities began disappearing or rendering inconsistently. While we rolled out some partial fixes a few days later, a number of issues have lingered for the past two weeks, understandably frustrating players attempting the Halondrus encounter.
It’s unusual for a bug like this to take so long to overcome. The first step we take when any bug is reported is to have our QA team investigate and reproduce the bug. Figuring out steps to reproduce a bug is essential, both for understanding what’s causing it and to make it so that we can correctly test the eventual fix. With the Halondrus issues, we ran into an immediate challenge: none of our QA testers or engineers were able to reproduce the bug following the same steps that were causing visuals to misbehave on live realms. That’s extremely unusual, and we spent some time trying to gather more information and test different theories, while applying some quick partial fixes.
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the no-promises department: slack_justyb shares a report from ZDNet: For over three decades, Linux has been written in the C programming language. Indeed, Linux is C's most outstanding accomplishment. But the last few years have seen a growing momentum to make the Rust programming language Linux's second Linux language. At the recent Open Source Summit in Austin, Texas, Linux creator Linus Torvald said he could see Rust making it into the Linux kernel as soon as the next major release. "I'd like to see the Rust infrastructure merging to be started in the next release, but we'll see." Linux said after the summit. "I won't force it, and it's not like it's going to be doing anything really meaningful at that point -- it would basically be the starting point. So, no promises."
Now, you may ask: "Why are they adding Rust at all?" Rust lends itself more easily to writing secure software. Samartha Chandrashekar, an AWS product manager, said it "helps ensure thread safety and prevent memory-related errors, such as buffer overflows that can lead to security vulnerabilities." Many other developers agree with Chandrashekar. Torvalds also agrees and likes that Rust is more memory-safe. "There are real technical reasons like memory safety and why Rust is good to get in the kernel." Mind you, no one is going to be rewriting the entire 30 or so million lines of the Linux kernel into Rust. As Linux developer Nelson Elhage said in his summary of the 2020 Linux Plumber's meeting on Rust in Linux: "They're not proposing a rewrite of the Linux kernel into Rust; they are focused only on moving toward a world where new code may be written in Rust." The three areas of potential concern for Rust support are making use of the existing APIs in the kernel, architecture support, and dealing with application binary interface (ABI) compatibility between Rust and C.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the behind-the-scenes department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The House Committee on Financial Services released a report late last week offering a harrowing glimpse inside Robinhood during the frenzy around Gamestop stock early last year. The stock trading and investing app was blindsided by the surge in interest from the first big "meme stock" after Redditors and other retail investors rallied around $GME and sent its price into the stratosphere. For Robinhood, which offers individual investors a relatively frictionless way to dive into the stock market, the saga was simultaneously a massive windfall of new users and brand interest and an existential threat that almost did the company in.
House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) called for a deep dive into what happened behind closed doors, and the new report, "Game Stopped: How the Meme Stock Market Event Exposed Troubling Business Practices, Inadequate Risk Management, and the Need for Regulatory and Legislative Reform," collects the committee's findings. The report, embedded below, is culled from a number of hearings, 95,000 pages of documents and 50 interviews. "My Committee's investigation into the matter showed we need better market regulation to address the troubling business practices that were uncovered during our investigation," Waters said. "Payment for order flow and gamification make it profitable for a new generation of trading apps to push retail investors to make as many trades as possible, making the markets more volatile than ever."
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the case-settled department: Less than a week after IBM was ordered in an age discrimination lawsuit to produce internal emails in which its former CEO and former SVP of human resources discuss reducing the number of older workers, the IT giant chose to settle the case for an undisclosed sum rather than proceed to trial next month. The Register reports: The order, issued on June 9, in Schenfeld v. IBM, describes Exhibit 10, which "contains emails that discuss the effort taken by IBM to increase the number of 'millennial' employees." Plaintiff Eugene Schenfeld, who worked as an IBM research scientist when current CEO Arvind Krishna ran IBM's research group, sued IBM for age discrimination in November, 2018. His claim is one of many that followed a March 2018 report by ProPublica and Mother Jones about a concerted effort to de-age IBM and a 2020 finding by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that IBM executives had directed managers to get rid of older workers to make room for younger ones.
"The emails contained within Exhibit 10 evidence an interest at the then CEO-level to change the profile of IBM employees so that it reflected a younger workforce," said New Jersey Superior Court Judge Alberto Rivas in his order. On June 14 the judge dismissed the case because IBM agreed to settle. That will prevent the messages in which former CEO Ginny Rometty and former HR SVP Diane Gherson are said to discuss what the judge described as "the push to increase the number of millennial employees and decrease the number of older employees" from being made public. "The facts of the matter have not changed: there was and is no systemic age discrimination at IBM and the data back that up," IBM's spokesperson said. "Further, with regards to the Schenfeld case, age played no role whatsoever in this individual's departure."
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the public-service-announcement department: T-Mobile has just officially launched its new ad platform, known as T-Mobile Advertising Solutions. That innocuous name hides a rather sketchy business model -- it aggregates your mobile application usage and sells it to advertisers. Android Police reports: The specifics of the program will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the ebb and flow of browser tracking. T-Mobile uses network-level tools to track the apps that people use on their phones, and it then anonymizes and aggregates that data to lump you into various "personas," or "cohorts" as other platforms would call it. For example, if you regularly use Expensify and airline apps on your phone, T-Mobile could identify you as a business traveler for advertising purposes. This program has been in testing for the past year as "T-Mobile Marketing Solutions," according to The Verge, but it is now live with its new name.
There is some good news (but less of it for Android fans). T-Mobile does not currently collect app data on iOS users, fearing it could run afoul of Apple's privacy rules. But we Android users are fair game, apparently. However, you can opt-out of T-Mobile's program using its official "Magenta Marketing Platform Choices" app. Alternatively, the Digital Advertising Alliance offers an app that lets you opt-out of numerous trackers, including T-Mobile Advertising Solutions, which is listed under its old name of T-Mobile Marketing Solutions.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the record-breaking department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: AMcMurtry Speirling piloted by former F1 and IndyCar racing driver Max Chilton broke the Goodwood hill record Sunday, crushing the previous record set by the VW ID.R by nearly a full second. The electric fan car rocketed -- almost literally -- up the hill in a staggering 39.08 seconds, compared to the electric prototype's 39.90. The Speirling is the creation of a British-Irish startup that set out to build a ridiculously powerful and lightweight car that could be driven on the track and on the streets (a road-legal version of the Goodwood fan car is in the works). The batmobile-looking machine reportedly weighs less than 1,000 kilograms (less than 2,200 pounds), yet boasts over 1,000 horsepower courtesy of its dual electric motors. While boasting a power-to-weight ratio of 1,000 bhp per ton surely played a role at the Goodwood Festival of Speed over the weekend, it's the car's twin fans hidden within the bespoke chassis that really helped it achieve that record-setting time. Much like Gordon Murray's T.50 supercar, the Speirling's fans essentially suck the car to the ground and provide it with other-worldly downforce. Factor in the massive rear wing and other external bodywork, and the EV is essentially glued to the road while cornering at high speed. You can watch video of the impressive feat here.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the won't-be-heard department: The Supreme Court declined Apple's bid for a hearing over two Qualcomm patents (US Patent No. 7,844,037 and US Patent No. 8,683,362) that were part of lawsuits filed in 2017, claiming infringement by Apple's iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches. The Verge reports: Reuters points out that Apple and Qualcomm's 2019 settlement of a worldwide legal battle over patents largely ended the squabbling in favor of a six-year licensing agreement but allowed a case in front of the Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board to continue. There, Apple argued the two patents should be invalid, but the board ruled in Qualcomm's favor. Last April, the Federal Circuit court rejected Apple's request for an appeal based on the 2019 settlement covering thousands of patents, including those two. At the time, Apple argued that its royalty payments and risk of being sued again were reasons for a hearing.
In its appeal to the Supreme Court (pdf), Apple argued that Qualcomm might use the patents in a lawsuit again once the license expires in 2025 or in 2027 if it's extended. The Department of Justice under the Biden administration submitted an amicus brief rejecting those arguments in May and asked the Supreme Court to deny Apple's request. Now that it has, we'll probably have to wait until that license agreement eventually expires to know what will happen next.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the politics-trumps-business department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Independent: The so-called "blank check" company behind former president Donald Trump's Truth Social platform now appears to be the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors who are looking into whether the company or its executives violated federal securities laws. Shares of the Special Purpose Acquisition Company, known as Digital World Acquisition Corporation, fell nine percent in early trading on Monday after CEO Patrick Orlando filed a statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to report that the company, which is pursuing a merger with the former president's Trump Media and Technology Group, was issued a subpoena by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York.
Mr Orlando also wrote that each member of DWAC's board of directors has also been issued a subpoena by the same grand jury. The grand jury subpoenas, he said, appear to be "seeking various documents and information" that are substantially similar to subpoenas issued to the company by the SEC earlier this year, as well as documents relating to the company's previous SEC filings, "communications with or about multiple individuals, and information regarding Rocket One Capital," a venture capital and private equity firm. The US securities regulator is probing whether DWAC executives violated laws which ban negotiations between the company and Mr Trump's tech firm before DWAC went public in late 2021. After Mr Trump announced his company's pending deal with DWAC, shares in the public company skyrocketed by over 400 per cent.
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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the tough-luck department: Valuations have collapsed even faster than they climbed, making fresh funding hard to come by. From a report: As a wave of fintechs rode successive funding rounds to ever-higher valuations over the past five years, Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna declared its ambition to become the Ryanair, Tesla and Amazon of the sector. But now as central banks raise rates in a fight against surging inflation, Klarna is trying to raise fresh cash at less than half its peak $46bn valuation and fintechs are having to come to terms with a world where expansion can no longer be fuelled by cheap money and business models must be demonstrated by profits. A record amount of investment poured into fintech companies in 2021, but many now struggle to raise fresh funds and are discussing selling themselves or accepting lower valuations to stay afloat, according to investors, analysts and executives in the industry.
On Thursday, payments services provider SumUp raised cash at a valuation of $8.5bn -- significantly below the $21bn valuation mooted earlier this year. And as belts tighten, a fintech's chances of survival may be measured by the amount of cash sitting on its balance sheet. "You are in panic mode if your runway is less than a year," said Erik Podzuweit, founder and co-chief executive officer of German investment app Scalable Capital. Venture capital firms more than doubled their investments in the sector last year to $134bn, helping fintech valuations outperform any other tech subsector, according to Crunchbase data. Funding peaked in the second quarter of 2021 as investors such as Accel, Sequoia Capital, SoftBank and Berkshire Hathaway backed groups including Brazilian digital lender Nubank, German broker Trade Republic and Amsterdam-based payments company Mollie. Financial services companies accounted for roughly $1 out of every $5 in venture capital investment last year.
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Kurozaki Sakura is an artist based in China.
With most labs, the hushed horror stories are about something like dimethylmercury or prions, but occasionally you'll get a weird lab where it's about the soda machine or the drop ceiling. 
Hey, remember this time last year when Reubs whipped up a more modern version of the classic Simpsons: Hit & Run in just a week? Well he’s back in 2022 and has far more ambitious goals for the project.
Supreme Court Rejects Apple's Bid To Continue Fighting Over Two Qualcomm Patents 2022-06-27 16:55:01
For those of you who’ve been longingly (...or jealously) watching as a lucky few get to play around with their fancy, new Steam Decks, well, I’ve got some good news. Valve has announced it will start sending out Q3 Steam Deck reservation emails later this week. And, it also confirmed it’s ramping up actually shipping…
Today, a Chinese AAA studio announced that it would be adapting a famous wuxia novel series into a martial arts game. The demo trailer showed off stylish combat that heavily incorporates exaggerated aerial movements, which are a common hallmark of wuxia cinema but which I’ve rarely seen so gracefully replicated in…
