Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the big-investments department: Jonathan M. Gitlin reports Ars Technica: Honda announced today that it will spend $11 billion to expand its electric vehicle manufacturing presence in North America. The Japanese automaker already has a number of factories in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and it's this last one that will benefit from the expansion, with four EV-related plants planned for Ontario. Honda says it has begun evaluating requirements for what it's calling an "innovative and environmentally responsible" EV factory and a standalone EV battery plant in Alliston, Ontario, which is already home to Honda's two existing Canadian manufacturing facilities.
Additionally, the automaker wants to set up another two sites as joint ventures. One will be a plant that processes cathode active materials and their precursors -- the various elements like nickel and manganese that are combined with lithium in lithium-ion batteries -- set up in a partnership with POSCO Future M, a South Korean battery material and chemical company. (POSCO is already working with General Motors on another joint venture battery precursor material facility in Betancour, Quebec, that is supposed to become operational in 2026.) A second joint venture will be a partnership with Asahi Kasei, which will manufacture battery separators, the material that keeps the anode and cathode apart. The locations of these two joint ventures have not yet been announced.
Honda thinks it will be able to start making EVs in Ontario in 2028 and says the assembly plant will have the capacity to build 240,000 EVs per year. Meanwhile, the battery plant is planned to have an annual output of 36 GWh.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the new-and-shiny department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: TSMC announced its leading-edge 1.6nm-class process technology today, a new A16 manufacturing process that will be the company's first Angstrom-class production node and promises to outperform its predecessor, N2P, by a significant margin. The technology's most important innovation will be its backside power delivery network (BSPDN). Just like TSMC's 2nm-class nodes (N2, N2P, and N2X), the company's 1.6nm-class fabrication process will rely on gate-all-around (GAA) nanosheet transistors, but unlike the current and next-generation nodes, this one uses backside power delivery dubbed Super Power Rail. Transistor and BSPDN innovations enable tangible performance and efficiency improvements compared to TSMC's N2P: the new node promises an up to 10% higher clock rate at the same voltage and a 15%-20% lower power consumption at the same frequency and complexity. In addition, the new technology could enable 7%-10% higher transistor density, depending on the actual design.
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the earnings-report department: Alphabet has reported first quarter results that topped analysts' estimates with soaring profits in its cloud division. It also announced its first-ever dividend. CNBC shares the results: Earnings per share: $1.89 vs. $1.51 per share expected by LSEG
Revenue: $80.54 billion vs. $78.59 billion expected by LSEG
Wall Street is also watching several other numbers in the report:
YouTube advertising revenue: $8.09 billion vs. $7.72 billion expected, according to StreetAccount.
Google Cloud revenue: $9.57 billion vs. $9.35 billion expected, according to StreetAccount.
Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $12.95 billion $12.74 billion expected, according to StreetAccount.
Alphabet's revenue increased 15% from $69.79 billion a year earlier, the fastest rate of growth since early 2022. Alphabet said its board approved a cash dividend of 20 cents per share to be paid on June 17, to stockholders of record as of June 10. The company said it "intends to pay quarterly cash dividends in the future."
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the tough-luck department: Seagate has joined Western Digital in increasing the prices of hard drives, with rising demand due to the huge data requirements of AI taking the blame. AI is also behind a rapid growth in orders for Enterprise solid state drives. From a report: One of the big three makers of traditional rotating hard disk drives, Seagate informed customers that it is increasing prices effective immediately for new orders, but also for any changes to orders that are "over and above" previously committed volumes. This was disclosed in a letter from the company seen by analyst Trendforce, and comes just a couple of weeks after rival manufacturer Western Digital sent out a similar letter to customers informing them of price hikes.
According to Trendforce, the cause of the issue is two-fold: rising demand for high-capacity HDD products driven by the current craze for all things AI, and reduced production by hard drive manufacturers that means they are unable to meet the demand, leading to soaring prices. The rising demand comes from AI training requiring huge volumes of data: OpenAI's GPT-3 model is said to have been trained using 45TB of data, which may have been surpassed for newer models. And while flash-based SSDs boast high-speed and low-latency, storing everything in flash would still be costly. Seagate launched a 30TB hard drive line last year. Hard drive production was cut by as much as 20 percent over the last two years or so because of falling orders during the pandemic, and now manufacturers are unprepared for a sudden uptick in demand.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Dragonflight and Season of Discovery Hotfixes - April 25, 2024
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Classes
Fixed a bug with damage dealt by Rip & Tear, Internal Combustion, and Tear Open Wounds in Awakened raids.
Dungeons and Raids
Raid Finder now required item level 463 if the raid is Awakened.
Brackenhide Hollow
Addressed an issue where Stinkbreath can turn while casting Stinkbreath.
Addressed an issue where Wilted Oak’s Necrotic Breath visual can be out of sync with the creature’s facing.
Items
Veteran track items or items obtained from Awakened Outdoor Activities should now properly be able to be converted into Class Set items at the Revival Catalyst.
Resolved multiple issues with Dragonflight Season 4 tier set items not functioning after equipping certain Season 3 set items.
Dreambound gear caches from the Dreamsurge Coalesence vendor will now correctly award Season 4 Explorer 1/8 (item level 454 gear) and tokens will properly display the correct item level of its contents.
Fixed an issue that prevented Tiered Medallion Setting from functioning on Season 4 necklaces.
Fixed an issue preventing Season 4 crests from properly converting to their lower-tier currency.
Quests
“A Multi-Front Battle” can now be completed.
Season of Discovery
Using an Unconscious Dig Rat no longer dismisses pets.
Mage
Displacement no longer functions if the most recent use of Blink was on a different continent or in a different instance.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the world-we-live-in department: Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: Baltimore police have arrested Dazhon Leslie Darien, the former athletic director of Pikesville High School (PHS), for allegedly impersonating the school's principal using AI software to make it seem as if he made racist and antisemitic remarks. Darien, of Baltimore, Maryland, was subsequently charged with witness retaliation, stalking, theft, and disrupting school operations. He was detained late at night trying to board a flight at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. Security personnel stopped him because the declared firearm he had with him was improperly packed and an ensuing background check revealed an open warrant for his arrest.
"On January 17, 2024, the Baltimore County Police Department became aware of a voice recording being circulated on social media," said Robert McCullough, Chief of Baltimore County Police, at a streamed press conference today. "It was alleged the voice captured on the audio file belong to Mr Eric Eiswert, the Principal at the Pikesville High School. We now have conclusive evidence that the recording was not authentic. "The Baltimore County Police Department reached that determination after conducting an extensive investigation, which included bringing in a forensic analyst contracted with the FBI to review the recording. The results of the analysis indicated the recording contained traces of AI-generated content." McCullough said a second opinion from a forensic analyst at the University of California, Berkeley, also determined the recording was not authentic. "Based off of those findings and further investigation, it's been determined the recording was generated through the use of artificial intelligence technology," he said.
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the proposed-requirements department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Late January, the U.S. Department of Commerce published a notice of proposed rulemaking for establishing new requirements for Infrastructure as a Service providers (IaaS) . The proposal boils down to a 'Know Your Customer' regime for companies operating cloud services, with the goal of countering the activities of "foreign malicious actors." Yet, despite an overseas focus, Americans won't be able to avoid the proposal's requirements, which covers CDNs, virtual private servers, proxies, and domain name resolution services, among others. [...] Under the proposed rule, Customer Identification Programs (CIPs) operated by IaaS providers must collect information from both existing and prospective customers, i.e. those at the application stage of opening an account. The bare minimum includes the following data: a customer's name, address, the means and source of payment for each customer's account, email addresses and telephone numbers, and IP addresses used for access or administration of the account.
What qualifies as an IaaS is surprisingly broad: "Any product or service offered to a consumer, including complimentary or "trial" offerings, that provides processing, storage, networks, or other fundamental computing resources, and with which the consumer is able to deploy and run software that is not predefined, including operating systems and applications. The consumer typically does not manage or control most of the underlying hardware but has control over the operating systems, storage, and any deployed applications. The term is inclusive of "managed" products or services, in which the provider is responsible for some aspects of system configuration or maintenance, and "unmanaged" products or services, in which the provider is only responsible for ensuring that the product is available to the consumer."
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by from MMO Champion
The War Within Alpha Development Notes - April 25, 2024
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
The War Within Alpha has been updated with Alpha #2, build 54361.
NEW ZONES AND DELVES
The Ringing Deeps
NEW DUNGEONS
The Stonevault
Darkflame Cleft
NEW ALLIED RACE
Earthen
CHARACTER LEVEL
Developers’ note: With each phase, we encourage players to make a new template character and avoid using their previous characters as they could potentially be in a broken state. After making a new template character, make sure to talk to Questzertauren and he will prepare you for any available content.
Level 73 Character Template
Maximum Level: 75
CLASSES
The following Hero Talents are available for playtesting in Public Alpha 2:
DEMON HUNTER
Fel-Scarred
Fel-Scarred Demon Hunters embrace the monster within! Blasts of devastating Fel fire are unleashed while in demon form, and activating Metamorphosis greatly empowers additional Fel-themed abilities. The Fel-Scarred endure a pain that bubbles just beneath the surface, granting increased maximum Fury and a portion of their demon form bonuses at all times. Those who stand in their way will inevitably be introduced to that pain by intense fiery abilities and blades that burn with Fel energy.
MONK
Mastery of Harmony
Developers’ notes: Master of Harmony was accessible in the Public Alpha 1 build but several talents were still being worked on. In Public Alpha 2, Master of Harmony is now fully playtestable.
All Fear, Silence, Sleep, Stun & Interrupt visual effects have been updated with a new visual. Additionally, all movement speed slowing effects greater than 50% will now display a universal Slow visual on the target.
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the new-and-improved department: prisoninmate shares a report from 9to5Linux: Canonical released today Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) as the latest version of its popular Linux-based operating system featuring some of the latest GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source software. Powered by Linux kernel 6.8, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS features the latest GNOME 46 desktop environment, an all-new graphical firmware update tool called Firmware Updater, Netplan 1.0 for state-of-the-art network management, updated Ubuntu font, support for the deb822 format for software sources, increased vm.max_map_count for better gaming, and Mozilla Thunderbird as a Snap by default.
It also comes with an updated Flutter-based graphical desktop installer that's now capable of updating itself and features a bunch of changes like support for accessibility features, guided (unencrypted) ZFS installations, a new option to import auto-install configurations for templated custom provisioning, as well as new default installation options, such as Default selection (previously Minimal) and Extended selection (previously Normal)."
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the years-in-the-making department: Fintech giant Stripe announced on Thursday that it would let customers accept cryptocurrency payments, starting with USDC stablecoins, initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon. TechCrunch reports: This will be the first time that Stripe has taken crypto payments since 2018, when it dropped support for Bitcoin due to it being too unstable. Stripe in 2022 tried its first reentry into the crypto market when it announced payouts (but not payments) in USDC, with Twitter as its marquee customer for the service. Thursday's news has no customer names attached to it.
On Wednesday the company unveiled a long list of other launches, the most significant update being that Stripe, for the very first time, would let customers integrate competing payment providers with Stripe's other financial services tooling. Thursday's nod to expanding crypto support is also part of that bigger strategy to open up its walled garden. A brief timeline of Stripe's dance with crypto underscores the tricky line that Stripe has walked over the years when it comes to cryptocurrency. True to its disruptive roots as a fintech, the company has wanted to be in the middle of the conversation around how blockchain-based technologies will affect financial services. But it runs the risk of subverting its bigger business and positioning as a stable and sensible financial powerhouse if it dabbles too deeply or for too long in periods of instability. The company processed $1 trillion in transactions last year, and it's still growing; it is currently worth $65 billion on paper.
After months of debate about Xbox’s future as some of its big console exclusives jumped ship to PlayStation 5, we have our clearest evidence yet of why Microsoft is experimenting with a new multiplatform approach: fewer and fewer people are buying Xboxes. 
A 2014 remastered port of Tomb Raider (2013) has finally made its way to PC via a quiet launch on the Microsoft Store. 
Legendary mangaka Akira Toriyama, character designer for Chrono Trigger and creator of the Dragon Ball series, passed away in March 2024. He was just 68 years old. Though he’s gone now, publisher Bandai Namco has shared a note Toriyama wrote in January 2024 about developer ILCA’s Sand Land, an action RPG based on the… 
One year after it came back, Blizzcon, Blizzard’s once-annual dedicated event, isn’t returning for 2024. While the Overwatch and Warcraft developer plans to show off more of its games at different events throughout the year, Blizzcon has been a center point for the studio’s community since it began in 2005. Blizzcon… 
