FTC To Vote On Noncompete Ban 2024-04-23 10:55:01
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the up-next department: The Federal Trade Commission is set to vote Tuesday afternoon on a proposal to ban noncompete agreements, which prevent workers from taking positions at competitors for a period of time after they leave a job. From a report: The ban could be a win for workers -- particularly at the low end of the income scale. Critics of these agreements say they stifle innovation and wage growth by restricting workers' ability to take new jobs that pay higher wages or offer some other opportunity. They also make it tougher for employers to hire strong talent, lessening competition.

Some states have laws limiting noncompetes to higher-income folks or banning them altogether -- but most don't. Experts told Axios that the final rule will likely look similar to the draft proposal, which was a broad prohibition on all noncompetes, even for executives. Any final rule is unlikely to take effect for many years -- if ever, as it will surely get tied up in court. The Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the ban, has already said it's ready and willing to file a lawsuit.
Posted by Tony_Bacala from TFW2005


Another reissue for a Generations Optimus Prime is live today with a new round of Commander Class Armada Optimus Prime figures.  Hasbro has been dropping new orders for previously released Optimus Prime figures starting earlier this year, and now Armada Op joins the list.  He’s retailing for $89.99 and due to ship in August 2024. Transformers Legacy Evolution Commander Armada Universe Optimus Prime TFSource, Entertainment Earth, Big Bad Toy Store, Robot Kingdom, The Chosen Prime, Ages Three and Up Check the previous » Continue Reading.

The post Commander Class Armada Optimus Prime ReIssue appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.
Posted by Tony_Bacala from The Toyark


Two new The Vintage Collection figures drop today with Jedi Survivor Cal Kestis in Imperial Officer Disguise and a Mandalorian Judge from The Mandalorian Season 3.  Each are $16.99 with release dates in Summer 2024.  Hit our sponsors to snag ...

The post New Jedi Survivor and Mando Star Wars Vintage Collection Figures Going Live appeared first on The Toyark - News.
Posted by Tony_Bacala from The Toyark


The next product celebrating Marvel’s 85th Anniversary is going live today with the Luke Cage and Iron Fist 2 Pack.  Retail is $49.99 with a Summer 2024 release window.  Check out our sponsors below, read on for full info and ...

The post Marvel 85th Anniversary Luke Cage and Iron Fist 2 Pack appeared first on The Toyark - News.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Heritage Armor Sets Obtainable by Timerunning Characters

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

If we level a character in the Remix would they get access to heritage armor in Remix or would have to wait till the war within? I have 3 that I was working on but if I can level faster in remix maybe just do there?

Hello!

After a great deal of careful testing, we can confirm that earning Heritage armor on Timerunning characters all works as intended. Your Timerunner becomes eligible for the quest when you hit 50 in Pandaria.

Please note that the game won’t offer you the quest or show the achievement as completed while you’re in Pandaria, and until the event ends, you can’t leave Pandaria. So completing it requires the event to end.

After the event ends, you’ll simply log in, and then the quest appears, and then you can turn it in to get the achievement and the Heritage armor reward.
No One Buys Books Any More 2024-04-23 10:05:02
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: The U.S. publishing industry is driven by celebrity authors and repeat bestsellers, according to testimony from a blocked merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. Only 50 authors sell over 500,000 copies annually, with 96% of books selling under 1,000 copies. Publishing houses spend most of their advance money on celebrity books, which along with backlist titles like The Bible, account for the bulk of their revenue and fund less commercially successful books.
Posted by Tony_Bacala from The Toyark


New 2 pack from McFarlane Toys DC Multiverse today with a modern era comic based Joker and Punchline. Retail is $39.99 with a ship date in July 2024. While joker has been done thoroughly so far, this is our first ...

The post DC Multiverse Joker and Punchline Two Pack appeared first on The Toyark - News.
Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
Open-world zombie survival game 7 Days to Die launched in Early Access on Steam in 2013. Three years later, the game arrived on consoles. And now, over a decade after its initial launch, 7 Days to Die is finally leaving Early Access with its 1.0 update. However, console players will have to re-buy the game to see the…

< This article continues on their website >
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the moving-forward department: prisoninmate writes: Fedora Linux 40 distribution has been officially released -- powered by the latest Linux 6.8 kernel series, and featuring the GNOME 46 and KDE Plasma 6 desktop environments, reports 9to5Linux: "Powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.8 kernel series, the Fedora Linux 40 release ships with the GNOME 46 desktop environment for the flagship Fedora Workstation edition and the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment for the Fedora KDE Spin, which defaults to the Wayland session as the X11 session was completely removed."

"Fedora Linux 40 also includes some interesting package management changes, such as dropping Delta RPMs and disabling support in the default configuration of DNF / DNF5. It also changes the DNF behavior to no longer download filelists by default. However, this release doesn't ship with the long-awaited DNF5 package manager. For AMD GPUs, Fedora Linux 40 ships with AMD ROCm 6.0 as the latest release of AMD's software optimized for AI and HPC workload performance, which enables support for the newest flagship AMD Instinct MI300A and MI300X datacenter GPUs."
Posted by Diego Argüello from Kotaku
Final Fantasy XIV is a gargantuan experience, and that’s saying something for the series’ standard. The MMORPG is soon to welcome its latest expansion, Dawntrail, on June 28 for those who pre-ordered it. If you’re starting to get FOMO and you want to discover what all the fuss is about, there’s quite a bit of ground…

< This article continues on their website >
Posted by Willa Rowe from Kotaku
When Sucker for Love: First Date was released in 2022, its blend of cosmic horror vibes with dating sim mechanics made it a cult hit. But it’s essentially one big joke about how funny it would be to make Cthulu into a busty babe that you could kiss as long as you did progressively more horrific things for her. It’s a…

< This article continues on their website >
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the what-in-the-world department: Chinese tech giant Kuaishou is laying off employees in their mid-30s as part of a company-wide restructuring plan dubbed "Limestone," FT reported Tuesday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. The move highlights the pervasive ageism in China's tech sector, where younger workers are favored for their perceived willingness to work long hours and keep up with the latest technological developments, the report adds.

While China's labor law does not explicitly prohibit age discrimination, some have interpreted it as such. However, tech executives have openly expressed their preference for younger employees, with companies like ByteDance and Pinduoduo boasting some of the youngest workforces in the industry. The economic slowdown and regulatory crackdowns have exacerbated the problem, with tens of thousands of jobs cut across the sector in recent months. Those over 35 face significant challenges in finding new employment, as even the civil service and service sector prioritize younger applicants. The situation has left many older tech workers anxious about their future job prospects, the report adds.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the race-intensifies department: Microsoft has launched Phi-3 Mini, a lightweight AI model with 3.8 billion parameters, as part of its plan to release three small models. Phi-3 Mini, trained on a smaller data set compared to large language models, is available on Azure, Hugging Face, and Ollama. Microsoft claims Phi-3 Mini performs as well as models 10 times its size, offering capabilities similar to GPT-3.5 in a smaller form factor. Smaller AI models are more cost-effective and perform better on personal devices.
Posted by Ethan Gach from Kotaku
The latest trailer for Destiny 2: The Final Shape takes players on a tour of the Pale Heart, a lush paradise plagued by corruption fans have been waiting a decade to visit. The trip is narrated by Nathan Fillion, who’s reprising his role as the wise-cracking cyborg Cayde-6, except this time he’s deadly serious. The…

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Posted by Levi Winslow from Kotaku
You ever play Mario Kart 8 and get absolutely dusted by your friends? Maybe, after losing all four races in a single cup, you take your build back to the garage, tinkering with the stats in an effort to create the fastest racer your friend group has ever seen. Well, science has now given us the tools to find the most…

< This article continues on their website >
Posted by Kenneth Shepard from Kotaku
We previously learned that Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar’s neverending success story that has outsold entire franchises on its own, once had several pieces of single-player DLC in the works. According to previous reports, the studio scrapped planned story mode add-ons in favor of focusing on the money-printing Grand Theft…

< This article continues on their website >
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: Google has fired another 20 workers for participating in protests against its $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, according to an activist group representing the workers. From a report: In total, the company has now fired around 50 employees over sit-in protests held in Google offices last week that were part of yearslong discontent among a group of Google and Amazon workers over claims that Israel is using the companies' services to harm Palestinians. Google has denied those claims, saying Project Nimbus, the cloud-computing contract, doesn't involve "highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services," and that Israeli government ministries that use its commercial cloud must agree to its terms of services and other policies.

No Tech For Apartheid, the group representing the workers, claimed in a statement that Google is attempting to "quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them." "That's because Google values its profit, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, more than people. And it certainly values it over its own workers," it said. The group said it will continue organizing until Google cancels Project Nimbus. Further reading: Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'.
Posted by John Walker from Kotaku
Team Fortress 2 is 17 years old, and one day we are all going to die. The in-built cruelty of entropy ensures our universe is finite, and all things must eventually fade into heat-death. Staving off a small element of this inevitability was Valve’s online shooter getting a big patch last week, which in turn caused the…

< This article continues on their website >
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the failed-experiment department: Toyota's Mirai, a hydrogen-powered Fuel Cell EV initially heralded as the future of driving, has faced significant challenges due to inadequate hydrogen fueling infrastructure. As chronicled by InsideEVs, many owners have become disillusioned with the vehicle's high operational costs, unreliable refueling options, and significant depreciation, prompting lawsuits and calls for buybacks. Longtime Slashdot reader whoever57 writes: Toyota Mirai owners are fed up and disillusioned. Hydrogen fuel pumps are hard to find and, rather than new pumps opening, they are closing down. Owners feel misled about the costs and availability of hydrogen fuel stations. Even if a Mirai owner can find a fuel station, it may not be operating. Moreover, refueling is frequently a long and problematic process, with pumps taking over an hour to fill a tank and cars getting stuck to the fuel pump for hours. It would be quicker to charge a battery EV. Naturally, resale values of these cars are plummeting. Even without those problems, once the complimentary hydrogen fuel supply that Toyota gives new owners expires or runs out, the cost of hydrogen fuel becomes quite expensive. "Not in my wildest dreams or nightmares would I expect a purchase from a giant car company like Toyota would turn out to be such a terrible experience," said owner Shawn Hall. "The entire H2 vehicle experience is an experiment that is failing. I didn't expect to buy a vehicle from Toyota and feel duped, cheated, and misled."

Another user wrote on Reddit: "We all need to realize that we bought a vehicle that had, at best, a questionable future. Unfortunately in this instance, the gamble didn't pay off, and the technology of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles does not appear to be something the vehicle industry is invested in pursuing. Very similar to HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, there was one clear winner and in our instance, the battery-powered EV won out over H2. Its sucks, but it is what it is."
Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005


Hasbro designer Sam “King Samlock” Smith has treated us with another “from screen to toy” post, via his Instagram account. He shows us the development of the recently revealed Transformers MPM-15 Movie Masterpiece Decepticon Brawl. Sam Smith tells us about the creative process of this modern rendition of the powerful and tough Decepticon from the Transformers 2007 live-action movie plus several CAD turnaround videos. We have a closer look at robot mode, alt mode and a complete scale comparison chart with other Masterpiece Movie figures. Read all the mirrored material after the jump, this time Sam Smith really shared a lot of information and trivia » Continue Reading.

The post Transformers MPM-15 Movie Masterpiece Decepticon Brawl “From Screen To Toy” Images & Videos appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.
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