Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the thanks-for-the-heads-up department: "Players who made Steam purchases of Helldivers 2 are now, months after the fact, being told by Sony that their games will be useless unless linked to a PSN account," writes longtime Slashdot reader Baron_Yam. From a report: Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment announced today that Helldivers 2 players on Steam will soon be required to link their in-game profiles to a PlayStation Network account -- a feature that was optional at launch due to "technical issues" -- or risk losing access to the game. SIE explained that account linking allows players to take advantage of "safety and security" provided by PlayStation, as it can more easily protect folks from "griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behavior."

Many Steam players haven't responded well to the news. As of the time of writing, over 2,500 negative user reviews have been submitted to the game's storefront page today, blemishing an otherwise spotless "Very Positive" rating. Some reviews cite data harvesting and security concerns as potential worries. Others point to the fact that Sony waited months after launch to make account linking mandatory. How this affects players in regions that don't have access to the PlayStation Network is a bigger concern, though. In the Helldivers 2 Discord, community manager Thomas 'Twinbeard' Petersson said they aren't yet sure what these rule changes meant for players in areas without PSN access, which could be another factor contributing to the negative downturn.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the cease-and-desist department: A bipartisan group of senators, led by Jeff Merkley, John Kennedy, and Roger Marshall, is advocating for limitations on the Transportation Security Administration's use of facial recognition technology due to concerns about privacy and civil liberties. PBS reports: In a letter on Thursday, the group of 14 lawmakers called on Senate leaders to use the upcoming reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration as a vehicle to limit TSA's use of the technology so Congress can put in place some oversight. "This technology poses significant threats to our privacy and civil liberties, and Congress should prohibit TSA's development and deployment of facial recognition tools until rigorous congressional oversight occurs," the senators wrote.

The effort, led by Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., John Kennedy, R-La., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., "would halt facial recognition technology at security checkpoints, which has proven to improve security effectiveness, efficiency, and the passenger experience," TSA said in a statement. The technology is currently in use at 84 airports around the country and is planned to expand in the coming years to the roughly 430 covered by TSA.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the speed-above-everything department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Late last year, an artificial intelligence engineer at Amazon was wrapping up the work week and getting ready to spend time with some friends visiting from out of town. Then, a Slack message popped up. He suddenly had a deadline to deliver a project by 6 a.m. on Monday. There went the weekend. The AI engineer bailed on his friends, who had traveled from the East Coast to the Seattle area. Instead, he worked day and night to finish the job. But it was all for nothing. The project was ultimately "deprioritized," the engineer told CNBC. He said it was a familiar result. AI specialists, he said, commonly sprint to build new features that are often suddenly shelved in favor of a hectic pivot to another AI project.

The engineer, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said he had to write thousands of lines of code for new AI features in an environment with zero testing for mistakes. Since code can break if the required tests are postponed, the Amazon engineer recalled periods when team members would have to call one another in the middle of the night to fix aspects of the AI feature's software. AI workers at other Big Tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, told CNBC about the pressure they are similarly under to roll out tools at breakneck speeds due to the internal fear of falling behind the competition in a technology that, according to Nvidia
CEO Jensen Huang, is having its "iPhone moment."

Posted by Claire Jackson from Kotaku
While Metal Gear Solid’s 2023 Master Collection has more than its fair share of technical issues, it still packs a ton of solid Metal Gear action for you to play through. Like the full version of 1999’s Metal Gear Solid VR Missions (which do not require a VR headset, in case you were wondering), a spin-off to 1998’s Me…

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the tussle-continues department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Relations between Russia and Germany were already tense, with Germany providing military support to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Russian state hackers were behind a cyberattack last year that targeted the Social Democrats, the leading party in the governing coalition. "Russian state hackers attacked Germany in cyberspace," she said at a news conference in the Australian city of Adelaide. "We can attribute this attack to the group called APT28, which is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia."

"This is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences," she said. The Russian Embassy in Germany on Friday denied Moscow was involved in a 2023 cyberattack. In a statement the embassy said its envoy "categorically rejected the accusations that Russian state structures were involved in the given incident ... as unsubstantiated and groundless." The Council of the EU later said that Czechia's institutions have also been a target of the cyber campaign. In a statement by the EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, the bloc's nations said they "strongly condemn the malicious cyber campaign conducted by the Russia-controlled Advanced Persistent Threat Actor 28 (APT28) against Germany and Czechia." Further reading: EU and NATO Condemn Russian Cyber Attacks Against Germany and Czechia.

Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
A large and popular open-source mapping database used by many companies, apps, and websites is currently dealing with a strange problem: Random, fake beaches are appearing in places like backyards, church parking lots, and golf courses. And the community knows who to blame: Pokémon Go players trying to catch a rare…

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Posted by Levi Winslow from Kotaku
Earlier this week, Riot Games deployed a patch for League of Legends that introduced new anti-cheat software to curb “scripters, botters, and cheaters.” Unfortunately, players reported issues with the popular MOBA following the update, saying that the new anti-cheat program had bricked their PCs. Riot Games has…

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the big-beef department: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill this week banning and criminalizing the manufacture and sale of lab-grown meat in the state. From a report: The legislation joins similar efforts from three other states -- Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee -- that have also looked to stop the sale of lab-grown meat, which is believed to still be years away from commercial viability. "Florida is fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals," DeSantis said. "We will save our beef."

Lab-grown meat, also known as cultivated meat, has attracted considerable attention in recent years as startups have raised millions of dollars to improve the technology meant to create a climate-friendly alternative to traditional meat sources. Cultivated meat is usually grown in a metal vessel from a sample of animal cells. They multiply in a container called a bioreactor while being fed with water, amino acids, vitamins and lipids -- a process that can be difficult to do at scales large enough to create enough food for commercial sale. Still, some companies have made strides, with two California startups receiving approval from U.S. regulators last year to sell lab-grown chicken. Those companies said Florida's bill stifles innovation in a space that is becoming competitive globally.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: The UK government's climate action plan is unlawful, the high court has ruled, as there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. From a report: The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, will now be expected to draw up a revised plan within 12 months. This must ensure that the UK achieves its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet. The environmental charities Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth took joint legal action with the Good Law Project against the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) over its decision to approve the carbon budget delivery plan (CBDP) in March 2023.

In a ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Sheldon upheld four of the five grounds of the groups' legal challenge, stating that the decision by the former energy security and net zero secretary Grant Shapps was "simply not justified by the evidence." He said: "If, as I have found, the secretary of state did make his decision on the assumption that each of the proposals and policies would be delivered in full, then the secretary of state's decision was taken on the basis of a mistaken understanding of the true factual position."

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Posted by Claire Jackson from Kotaku
Metal Gear Solid’s Master Collection has been out since October 2023. And while it is very lacking in some key ways that we’d expect from a modern remaster in the 21st century, it still contains a hefty selection of some of the greatest games of the late ‘90s and 2000s.

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Posted by Moises Taveras from Kotaku
I ran into an unfortunate softlock during my review of Another Crab’s Treasure, an adorable but still intimidating Soulslike, that has so far barred me from completing the game. Near the end of the game, you’re prompted to activate an elevator by an NPC that takes players to the final major area and the last few…

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Posted by from MMO Champion
Season of Discovery Realm Consolidation - Lava Lash US

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Good afternoon everyone,

The dust settles on our recent character moves in Season of Discovery and much like a similar situation in Europe, the Lava Lash roleplay ruleset realm isn’t where we want it to be. Roleplay is a ruleset that we generally try to leave alone, players in these communities often make strong connections and don’t have the same desires as other players on PvE and PvP realms.

But, Lava Lash is now looking a little too lean even after recent transfer additions to the realm. As a result we are going to mark Lava Lash as closed to new accounts and open transfers to the Wild Growth PvE and Crusader Strike RP-PvP realms. It is our hope that you will still be able to recreate your communities on these much larger realms, and hopefully attract some new role-players too!

These changes have already gone into effect and the transfers are open and will remain open for the lifetime of the realm. You can find the free transfer option in the in-game store while at the character select screen.

Posted by Ethan Gach from Kotaku
It’s been a terrible day for Helldivers 2 and the team behind it. Angry players swarmed the co-op shooter’s Steam page to review-bomb it like a giant hive of Terminids after a PlayStation Network login requirement was reinstituted on PC. “Ouch, right in the review score,” Arrowhead Studios CEO Johan Pilestedt tweeted…

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Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
Helldivers 2 is a game about endless war and now its fanbase finds itself in a similar situation as a civil war rages on between players following a change to how the super-popular online shooter will operate on PC.

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the moving-forward department: China launched an uncrewed lunar mission Friday that aims to bring back samples from the far side of the moon for the first time, in a potentially major step forward for the country's ambitious space program. From a report: The Chang'e-6 probe -- China's most complex robotic lunar mission to date -- blasted off on a Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China's Hainan island, where space fans had gathered to watch the historic moment. The country's National Space Administration said the launch was a success. The launch marks the start of a mission that aims to be a key milestone in China's push to become a dominant space power with plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and build a research base on its south pole.

It comes as a growing number of countries, including the United States, eye the strategic and scientific benefits of expanded lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive field. China's planned 53-day mission would see the Chang'e-6 lander touch down in a gaping crater on the moon's far side, which never faces Earth. China became the first and only country to land on the moon's far side during its 2019 Chang'e-4 mission. Any far-side samples retrieved by the Chang'e-6 lander could help scientists peer back into the evolution of the moon and the solar system itself -- and provide important data to advance China's lunar ambitions.

Posted by Claire Jackson from Kotaku
I recently decided to play a phenomenal old game called Metal Gear Solid via the recently released Metal Gear Solid Master Collection, hoping to show my friends the scene where I could see a man’s bare ass after he gets his lights knocked out and his clothes stolen. But censorship has struck again as I came to find…

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Posted by Willa Rowe from Kotaku
Almost a decade after the game’s Kickstarter campaign first launched, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is about to get its final update. The Castlevania: Symphony of the Night spiritual successor from former series producer Koji Igarashi released in 2019 and has been getting steady content updates ever since. These…

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Posted by from MMO Champion
This Week in WoW - May 3, 2024

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Catch up on all the latest World of Warcraft news from the last week—embrace the spirit of spring with May's Trading Post, take a dive into Norhrend Cup, mark your calendars for the next content update for Dragonflight—Dark Heart, learn more about the Cataclysm Classic Pre-Expansion, and more!

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The Cataclysm Classic Pre-Expansion Patch is Now Live

You’ve toppled the undead armies of the Lich King and ended Arthas' reign. Now, Deathwing, The Worldbreaker, bursts from the heart of the Maelstrom, unleashing his rage. Reignite the fire and help usher in a new Azeroth.

The Cataclysm Classic pre-expansion patch ushers in the shattering of Azeroth and the changed landscape in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, a variety of systems changes along with new class and race combinations, and the new Worgen and Goblin races. Players can also begin learning the new Archaeology profession, use Reforging to upgrade your gear, and more.

New Player Races: Goblin and Worgen

New Race and Class Combinations

Leveling Updates: Level through a changed landscape in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms from level 1 through 60.

Class Updates: New Talents, Trees, spells and More

New Profession: Archaeology

New Feature: Transmog Collection

Updated Character and Gear Stats

Your new journey begins with the pre-expansion patch—the Shattering of Azeroth—and continues with the launch of Cataclysm Classic on May 20, 2024, at 3:00 p.m. PDT worldwide. Learn more about what's in store for Azeroth from our official Cataclysm Classic overview.


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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: An anonymous reader shares a report: A software engineer has been keeping nearly 7,500 Firefox tabs open on her Mac computer for over two years -- and doesn't plan on closing them anytime soon. The Firefox power user, who goes by the pseudonym "Hazel" online, posted a screenshot showing 7,470 tabs open earlier this week after finding the browser initially unable to restore all the tabs. Hazel was able to bring the tabs back to life via a Firefox profile cache, however, and tells PCMag that reloading the full session took "no more than a minute."

"I feel like a part of me is restored," Hazel wrote on X once the Firefox tabs had returned. The Firefox fan tells PCMag in a message that she keeps so many tabs open for nostalgia reasons. "I like to scroll back and see clusters of tabs from months ago -- it's like a trip down memory lane on whatever I was doing/learning about/thinking about," she says. Surprisingly, all those tabs haven't impacted the computer's performance. "Firefox is quite memory efficient and isn't actually loading the websites unless I click on the tab -- so it's not very resource intensive," Hazel says.

Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005


Unique Toys Weibo account have been updated with images of the gray prototype of their new R09 Red Destroyer (Masterpiece Scale Age of Extinction Stinger). Unique Toys is bringing us a very promising AOE Stinger which looks very movie-accurate in both modes. We still have no concrete information about price or release date, but stay tuned with this space for more updates. See the images after the jump and then sound off on the 2005 Boards!

The post Unique Toys R09 Red Destroyer (Masterpiece Scale Age of Extinction Stinger) Prototype Images appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.