Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the back-from-the-dead department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Filmmaker Peter Jackson owns one of the largest private collections of bones of an extinct New Zealand bird called the moa. His fascination with the flightless ostrich-like bird has led to an unusual partnership with a biotech company known for its grand and controversial plans to bring back lost species. On Tuesday, Colossal Biosciences announced an effort to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the extinct South Island giant moa -- which once stood 12 feet (3.6 meters) tall -- with $15 million in funding from Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh. The collaboration also includes the New Zealand-based Ngai Tahu Research Centre. "The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do," said Jackson. "Every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa."

The moa had roamed New Zealand for 4,000 years until they became extinct around 600 years ago, mainly because of overhunting. A large skeleton brought to England in the 19th century, now on display at the Yorkshire Museum, prompted international interest in the long-necked bird. Unlike Colossal's work with dire wolves, the moa project is in very early stages. It started with a phone call about two years ago after Jackson heard about the company's efforts to "de-extinct" -- or create genetically similar animals to -- species like the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf. Then Jackson put Colossal in touch with experts he'd met through his own moa bone-collecting. At that point, he'd amassed between 300 and 400 bones, he said.

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by from MMO Champion
Patch 11.2 PTR - Build 61871

Build 61871 has been deployed to the Public Test Realms.

Ghosts of K'aresh Development Notes - July 8, 2025

Blizzard has posted the Development Notes for Build 61871.



Achievement Changes

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Dungeons

Feats of Strength

The War Within Keystone Conqueror: Season Three Attain a Mythic+ Rating of at least 1500 during The War Within Season Three. Account Wide. Title: The Unbound. Account Wide.

Unbound Hero: The War Within Season Three Name changed from "[PH] Hero: The War Within Season Three" to "Unbound Hero: The War Within Season Three". End The War Within Mythic+ Season 3 with a Mythic+ Rating in the top 0.1% of all players in your region.Title: The Unbound Hero.

War Within

Exploration

Phase-Lost-and-Found (New) Collect all of the Phase-List item appearances found from Phase Diving orbs. 10 points.

Strings Changes

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

OPTION_TOOLTIP_ACCESSIBILITY_FONT_SIZE - Adjust the display size of text used throughout the game in menus like Text to Speech, social features, and pop-up messages

SPELL_FAILED_CUSTOM_ERROR_2431 (New) - This mount cannot enter Untethered Space.

Misc Changes

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

LFG Dungeons

Dungeons

Manaforge Omega (New) - Disrupt Manaforge Omega's operations, or else risk a reborn Dimensius feasting on reality itself. Map: Manaforge Omega. Roles: .

Mounts

Ground Mounts

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by from MMO Champion
Ghosts of K'aresh Development Notes - July 8, 2025

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

THE WAR WITHIN SEASON 3

Additional raid and dungeon testing this week. See the schedules for more information:

Raid testing schedule

Dungeon testing schedule

CLASSES

Death Knight

Hero Talents

Deathbringer

Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus – Exterminate deals 20% increased damage, and Reaper’s Mark can stack up to 15 additional times. Upon exploding, Reaper’s Mark increases your critical strike chance by 10% for 8 seconds.

Rider of the Apocalypse

An issue causing the Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus to not grant the bonus damage to Undeath and Trollbane’s Icy Fury has been resolved.

Frost

Trollbane’s Icy Fury bonus from the Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus has been increased to 20% (was 10%).

Trollbane’s Obliterate from the Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus now deals Frost damage if was triggered from an Obliterate that consumed Killing Machine.

Trollbane’s Frostscythe damage from the Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus has been increased by 100%.

Unholy

An issue causing Whitemane’s Epidemic to benefit from the Mastery twice has been resolved.

Whitemane’s Death Coil damage increased by 100%.

Whitemane’s Epidemic damage from the Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus has been increased by 50%.

Whitemane’s Undeath bonus from the Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus has been increased to 20% (was 10%).

San’layn

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the human-decision-making-processes department: alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Researchers at Princeton University, Boston University and other institutes used machine learning to predict the strategic decisions of humans in various games. Their paper, published in Nature Human Behavior, shows that a deep neural network trained on human decisions could predict the strategic choices of players with high levels of accuracy. [...] Essentially, the team suggests that people behave more rationally while playing games that they perceive as easier. In contrast, when they are playing more complex games, people's choices could be influenced by various other factors, thus the "noise" affecting their behavior would increase.

As part of their future studies, the researchers would also like to shed more light on what makes a game "complex" or "easy." This could be achieved using the context-dependent noise parameter that they integrated into their model as a signature of "perceived difficulty." "Our analysis provides a robust model comparison across a wide range of candidate models of decision-making," said [Jian-Qiao Zhu, first author of the paper]. "We now have strong evidence that introducing context-dependence into the quantal response model significantly improves its ability to capture human strategic behavior. More specifically, we identified key factors in the game matrix that shape game complexity: considerations of efficiency, the arithmetic difficulty of computing payoff differences, and the depth of reasoning required to arrive at a rational solution."

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the ask-and-you-shall-receive department: Senators Tim Sheehy and Elizabeth Warren have introduced the bipartisan "Warrior Right to Repair Act," which would guarantee the military's right to repair its own equipment. The bill builds on a previous Army directive and has broad public support, with nearly 75% of Americans in favor, according to a PIRG poll. Engadget reports: The Department of Defense has not been immune from restrictive practices set forth by manufacturers, and much like the average consumer, has been hamstrung in its ability to repair its own equipment by clauses in its purchase agreements. According to the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), the current system leads to excessive repair and sustainment costs, and can even impede military readiness.

"When our neighbors, friends and family serve in our military, we expect them to get what they need to do their jobs as safely as possible," PIRG Federal Legislative Director Isaac Bowers wrote regarding the newly introduced bill. "Somehow, that hasn't included the materials and information they need to repair equipment they rely on. It's time we fixed that."

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the one-tool-closer-to-inbox-zero department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google announced on Tuesday that it's launching a new Gmail feature that is designed to help users easily manage their subscriptions and declutter their inboxes. The new "Manage subscriptions" tool is rolling out on the web, Android, and iOS in select countries. With the new feature, users can view and manage their subscription emails in one place and quickly unsubscribe from the ones they no longer want to receive.

Users can view their active subscriptions, organized by the most frequent senders, alongside the number of emails they've sent in the past few weeks. Clicking on a sender provides a direct view of all emails from them. If a user decides to unsubscribe, Gmail will send an unsubscribe request to the sender on their behalf. "It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of subscription emails clogging your inbox: Daily deal alerts that are basically spam, weekly newsletters from blogs you no longer read, promotional emails from retailers you haven't shopped in years can quickly pile up," Chris Doan, Gmail's Director of Product, wrote in a blog post.

Users can access the new feature by clicking the navigation bar in the top-left corner of their Gmail inbox and then selecting "Manage subscriptions." [...] Google says the new feature will begin rolling out on the web starting Tuesday, with Android and iOS users starting to receive it on July 14 and July 21, respectively. It may take up to 15 days from the start of the rollout for the feature to reach every user, the company says. The Manage subscriptions feature is available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the investing-in-the-future department: Meta has acquired a $3.5 billion stake in Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica, "a deal that increases the U.S. tech giant's financial commitment to the fast-growing smart glasses industry," reports Bloomberg. From the report: Meta's investment in the eyewear giant deepens the relationship between the two companies, which have partnered over the past several years to develop AI-powered smart glasses. Meta currently sells a pair of Ray-Ban glasses, first debuted in 2021, with built-in cameras and an AI assistant. Last month, it launched separate Oakley-branded glasses with EssilorLuxottica. EssilorLuxottica Chief Executive Officer Francesco Milleri said last year that Meta was interested in taking a stake the company, but that plan hadn't materialized until now.

The deal aligns with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's commitment to AI, which has become a top priority and major expense for the company. Smart glasses are a key part of that plan. While Meta has historically had to deliver its apps and services via smartphones created by competitors, glasses offer Meta a chance to build its own hardware and control its own distribution, Zuckerberg has said. The arrangement gives Meta the advantage of having more detailed manufacturing knowledge and global distribution networks, fundamental to turning its smart glasses into mass-market products. For EssilorLuxottica, the deal provides a deeper presence in the tech world, which would be helpful if Meta's futuristic bets pay off. Meta is also betting on the idea that people will one day work and play while wearing headsets or glasses.

Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005


Thanks to several reports from our TFW2005 members, we can report that Hasbro has started to send e-mails to all customer who informed about having issues with their copies of Haslab Omega Prime. Read on for details: “Thank you for your continued patience as we work to make things right with your HasLab Transformers: Legacy Robots in Disguise 2001 Omega Prime. Good news: your replacement, corrected figure (figure only, not full replacement product) is already on backorder, so there’s nothing more you need to do! Once your new figure is ready to ship (estimated fall 2025), we’ll send you an » Continue Reading.

The post Hasbro E-Mails Confirming Replacements For Haslab Omega Prime Incoming appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by from MMO Champion
Ghosts of K'aresh Development Notes - July 9, 2025

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

THE WAR WITHIN SEASON 3

Additional raid and dungeon testing this week. See the schedules for more information:

Raid testing schedule

Dungeon testing schedule

CLASSES

Death Knight

Hero Talents

Deathbringer

Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus – Exterminate deals 20% increased damage, and Reaper’s Mark can stack up to 15 additional times. Upon exploding, Reaper’s Mark increases your critical strike chance by 10% for 8 seconds.

Rider of the Apocalypse

An issue causing the Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus to not grant the bonus damage to Undeath and Trollbane’s Icy Fury has been resolved.

Frost

Trollbane’s Icy Fury bonus from the Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus has been increased to 20% (was 10%).

Trollbane’s Obliterate from the Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus now deals Frost damage if was triggered from an Obliterate that consumed Killing Machine.

Trollbane’s Frostscythe damage from the Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus has been increased by 100%.

Unholy

An issue causing Whitemane’s Epidemic to benefit from the Mastery twice has been resolved.

Whitemane’s Death Coil damage increased by 100%.

Whitemane’s Epidemic damage from the Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus has been increased by 50%.

Whitemane’s Undeath bonus from the Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus has been increased to 20% (was 10%).

San’layn

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new department: BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Apple is making a high-level leadership change that could significantly shape its future behind the scenes. The company has announced that longtime executive Jeff Williams will step down from his role as Chief Operating Officer later this month. His successor will be Sabih Khan, Apple's Senior Vice President of Operations and a key player in the company's global supply chain strategy. Williams isn't leaving Apple entirely just yet. He'll continue working closely with CEO Tim Cook for the rest of the year, overseeing Apple Watch and health initiatives, as well as leading the company's industrial design team until his retirement. After that, Apple's design team will report directly to Cook.

Khan's promotion is part of what Apple describes as a long-planned transition. Cook praised Khan as a "brilliant strategist" who helped Apple reduce its carbon footprint by over 60 percent, expand domestic manufacturing, and remain agile during global supply chain challenges. Khan has been with Apple for 30 years and took on a more prominent executive role in 2019. He has quietly helped the company build one of the most influential supply chains in the world.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the drastic-times-call-for-drastic-measures department: Intel is laying off over 500 employees in Oregon as part of a broader restructuring plan expected to impact about 20% of its workforce. Bloomberg reports: The Oregon job reduction will hit facilities in Aloha and Hillsboro starting on July 15, Intel said in a regulatory filing. The layoffs are expected to eliminate about 529 employees on a permanent basis. The latest disclosure follows an announcement in California, where 107 employees were let go at Intel's Santa Clara headquarters.

Under new Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan, Intel embarked on a plan in April to slash jobs and reduce operating expenses. The company hasn't given a total figure for the cuts, but a person familiar with the matter has put the amount at more than a fifth of staff. In a statement, Intel said it was making the Oregon cuts to become "a leaner, faster and more efficient company."

"Removing organizational complexity and empowering our engineers will enable us to better serve the needs of our customers and strengthen our execution," the company said. "We are making these decisions based on careful consideration of what's needed to position our business for the future, and we will treat people with care and respect as we complete this important work."

Posted by from MMO Champion
The War Within Season 3 PTR Dungeon Testing: July 8-16

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The War Within Season 3 dungeon testing continues on PTR today. The test period starts on Wednesday July 8th at 5PM PST (20:00 EDT, 2:00 CEST) and ends Tuesday July 16th at 10:00 PST (13:00 EDT, 20:00 CEST). Please note that the test period may be adjusted in the event of technical difficulties.

This week’s testing focus is on returning dungeons from The War Within:

Tazavesh, the Veiled Market (Hard Mode)

Tazavesh, the Streets of Wonder

Tazavesh, So’leah’s Gambit

Halls of Atonement

Notable updates to these dungeons include:

Tazavesh, the Veiled Market Hard Mode

Players can start this experience by entering the dungeon on Mythic difficulty and talking to Al’dalil at the entrance.

Tazavesh, Streets of Wonder

General

Density of enemies reduced in Zo’phex the Sentinel’s area

Timer reduced from 39 minutes to 32 minutes

Interrogation Specialist

No longer cast Stasis Beam

Zo’phex the Sentinel

Vigor’s duration increased from 6s to 12s

Rotating Body Armor has been removed

Ancient Core Hound

Health reduced by 10%

Ancient Dread’s cooldown has been increased

The Grand Menagerie

Initial RP has been reduced

Overloaded Mailemental

No longer leave behind Expedited Zone after defeat

P.O.S.T. Worker

No longer cast Postage Stamp

P.O.S.T. Master

Spells are now on a more consistent schedule

Mail portals now only become activated during Unstable Goods

Money Order’s damage has been reduced

Bazaar Event

Total number of trades required reduced from 4 to 3

Target vendor now shows up on the mini-map

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the let-the-best-agent-to-agent-protocols-win department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Linux Foundation announced at the Open Source Summit in Denver that it will now host the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol. Initially developed by Google and now supported by more than 100 leading technology companies, A2A is a crucial new open standard for secure and interoperable communication between AI agents. In his keynote presentation, Mike Smith, a Google staff software engineer, told the conference that the A2A protocol has evolved to make it easier to add custom extensions to the core specification. Additionally, the A2A community is working on making it easier to assign unique identities to AI agents, thereby improving governance and security.

The A2A protocol is designed to solve one of AI's most pressing challenges: enabling autonomous agents -- software entities capable of independent action and decision-making -- to discover each other, securely exchange information, and collaborate across disparate platforms, vendors, and frameworks. Under the hood, A2A does this work by creating an AgentCard. An AgentCard is a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) metadata document that describes its purpose and provides instructions on how to access it via a web URL. A2A also leverages widely adopted web standards, such as HTTP, JSON-RPC, and Server-Sent Events (SSE), to ensure broad compatibility and ease of integration. By providing a standardized, vendor-neutral communication layer, A2A breaks down the silos that have historically limited the potential of multi-agent systems.

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the diplomatic-footnoting department: The U.N. Human Rights Council passed a motion on climate change and human rights by consensus Tuesday after the Marshall Islands withdrew a divisive amendment calling for states to recommit to a fossil fuel phase-out. The motion calls on countries "to contribute to the global efforts" against climate change and follows the council's 2021 recognition of access to a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental right.

Oil-producing countries including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had voiced opposition to the original fossil fuel phrasing during negotiations. Instead, the final motion referenced "the imperative of defossilizing our economies" in a footnote, allowing passage without a vote where the outcome had been uncertain.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the PSA department: Activision removed "Call of Duty: WWII" from Microsoft Store and Game Pass after hackers exploited a security vulnerability that allowed them to compromise players' computers, TechCrunch reported Tuesday, citing a source. The gaming giant took the 2017 first-person shooter offline last week while investigating what it initially described only as "reports of an issue."

Players posted on social media claiming their systems had been hacked while playing the game. The vulnerability was a remote code execution exploit that enables attackers to install malware and take control of victims' devices. The Microsoft Store and Game Pass versions contained an unpatched security flaw that had been fixed in other versions of the game.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the desperate-times department: Corporate employees of Amazon have been asked to volunteer their time to the company's warehouses to assist with grocery delivery as it heads into its annual discount spree known as Prime Day. From a report: In a Slack message reviewed by the Guardian that went to thousands of white-collar workers in the New York City area from engineers to marketers, an Amazon area manager called for corporate "volunteers to help us out with Prime Day to deliver to customers on our biggest days yet." It is not clear how many took up the offer.

The ask came the day before Prime Day kicks off. The manager said volunteers are "needed" to work Tuesday through Friday this week, in two-hour shifts between 10am and 6pm in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the company operates a warehouse as part of its grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh. Corporate employees seconded to the warehouse would be tasked with picking items, preparing carts and bags of groceries for delivery, packing boxes on receiving carts, and working to "boost morale with distribution of snacks," though they would be allowed to step into a conference room to take meetings and calls, according to the message. The manager noted such an effort would help "connect" warehouse and corporate teams. Further reading: Amazon Prime Day Spending Down 14% in Early Hours From 2024.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the for-what-it-is-worth department: Napster has returned with an AI-powered reinvention, launching a platform of specialized chatbots and holographic avatars. The former dot-com music file-sharing pioneer now offers dozens of "AI companions" trained as experts in fields from therapy to business strategy, plus the View device for 3D holographic video chats, FastCompany reports.

Infinite Reality acquired Napster for $207 million in March and rebranded itself under the nostalgic name. The platform charges $19 monthly or $199 bundled with hardware, marking Napster's latest attempt at relevance after previous owners tried VR concerts and crypto ventures.

Posted by onslaught24 from TFW2005


Thanks to various users on social media, our third official Transformers LEGO set has been unveiled! Following the initial Optimus Prime and subsequent Bumblebee sets, we now have Soundwave! The first Decepticon in the LEGO Icons line, Soundwave comes with a plethora of accessory necessities and is fully transformable like Prime and Bee. In addition to a fully-transforming, MP-13-esque Soundwave, the set also includes Laserbeak and Ravage which also seem to be able to transform and store in the tape deck, as well as a miniature version of his alternate mode to go with his Icons plaque. The LEGO Icons » Continue Reading.

The post LEGO Icons – Transformers Soundwave Set Revealed appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the moving-forward department: An anonymous reader shares a blog post: Version 140 of the Thunderbird mail client has been released. Notable features include "dark message mode" to adapt message content to dark mode, the ability to easily transfer desktop settings to the mobile Thunderbird client, experimental support for Microsoft Exchange, as well as global controls for message threading and sort order.

Thunderbird 140 is an extended-support release (ESR) which will be supported for 12 months. However, the Thunderbird project is trying to encourage users to adopt the Release channel for monthly updates instead. The project is staggering upgrades to 140 for existing Thunderbird users in order to catch any significant bugs before they are widely deployed, but users can upgrade manually via the Help > About menu. See the release notes for a full list of changes.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the philosophy-meets-contract-law department: Microsoft and OpenAI are locked in acrimonious negotiations partly because they cannot agree on what artificial general intelligence means, despite having written the term into a contract worth over $13 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

One definition reportedly agreed upon by the companies sets the AGI threshold at when AI generates $100 billion in profits. Under their partnership agreement, OpenAI can limit Microsoft's access to future technology once it achieves AGI. OpenAI executives believe they are close to declaring AGI, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called using AGI as a self-proclaimed milestone "nonsensical benchmark hacking" on the Dwarkesh Patel podcast in February.