Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the growing-Google-graveyard department: Abner Li reports via 9to5Google: Since the launch of Health Connect in 2022, Google has been winding down the Google Fit developer APIs. Earlier this week, the company fully detailed how the "Google Fit APIs have been deprecated and will be supported until June 30, 2025." Fitness and exercise apps that previously used Google Fit have until the June 2025 deadline to switch to Health Connect, with Google broadly referring to it as the "Android Health platform."
Google's migration guide for developers lists what they're supposed to switch to on Android phones and Wear OS. However, there is no replacement for the Goals API that lets Google Fit users set "how many steps and heart points they want to aim for each day." Google says it will "share more details about what's next for Android Health" at I/O later this month.
As of this API shutdown announcement, Google has said nothing about the Google Fit apps on Android, Wear OS, and iOS. They still work to track activity and house your full archive. [...] At this point, it's clear that Google Fit is not the future. On the Pixel Watch, Fitbit is the default, while Samsung and other Wear OS manufacturers have their own health tracking solutions. If Google were to announce a deprecation of the Fit app, having it coincide with the June 2025 developer deadline makes sense.
Posted by AzT from TFW2005
Skybound’s Transformers Compendium Volume 1 paperback, collecting the Marvel Comics
series and first announced as part of our 40th Anniversary Celebration coverage in
February, is due for September arrival and now available for Amazon
pre-order: TRANSFORM AND ROLL OUT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING! The Transformers rocked the comic book world with their debut that was truly MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE, and now you can experience every issue – from the original series and tie-ins- in this new reader-friendly compendium format for the very first time. Discover the heroic Autobots, the evil Decepticons, and the galaxy-spanning war
» Continue Reading. The post
Skybound’s Transformers Compendium Volume 1 Available For Amazon Pre-Order appeared first on
Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the gotta-catch-em-all-at-all-costs department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Pokemon Go players are creating a headache for members of the open source map tool OpenStreetMaps by adding fake beaches where they don't exist in hopes of more easily catching Wigletts, a Pokemon that only spawns on beaches. OpenStreetMaps is a free, open source map tool much like Google or Apple maps, but is maintained by a self-governing community of volunteers where anyone is welcome to contribute. An April 27 thread in the OpenStreetMap community forum first spotted the issue, flagging two users in Italy who began marking beaches in all sorts of locations where they don't actually exist.
The OpenStreetMap user who noticed the fictitious beaches immediately connected the dots: Pokemon Go, the mega popular mobile game where players catch Pokemon and can engage in different activities depending on their geolocation, introduced different "biomes" like beach, city, forest, and mountains. Each of these have a different look, and critically, some specific Pokemon will only spawn at specific biomes. Wiglett, for example, only spawns at beaches. Some video game sites quickly noticed that Pokemon Go's beaches were appearing in real world locations like golf courses, sports fields, and other places that are not real beaches. Pokemon Go uses OpenStreetMap for its map data, and is how the game knows players are near certain points of interest.
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Posted by from MMO Champion
Season of Discovery - Catch Up with the Discoverer’s Delight Buff
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Join the path of discovery in Season of Discovery Phase 3. Beginning with weekly resets, players get the benefit of the Discoverer’s Delight experience buff*, which increases experience gains by 150% for all players through level 39 and 100% for players level 40-49! It’s a great time to join Season of Discovery, whether you’re just joining in the fun, or creating and leveling a whole new character.
Players can also visit any innkeeper in the capital cities to turn the experience buff off or on.
*Experience buff not available in other WoW Classic titles or modern World of Warcraft.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the tell-it-how-it-is department: The Rabbit R1 is one of the first standalone AI companion devices to hit the market, offering the ability to translate languages, identify objects in your environment, and order DoorDash, among other things. It's been in the news last week for its all around poor reviews that cite poor battery life, painfully slow responses, and missing features (sound familiar?). Now, it's been confirmed that the Rabbit R1 is powered by an Android app that can run on existing Android phones. Android Authority reports: What ended up souring a lot of people's opinions on the product was the revelation -- in an Android Authority original report -- that the R1 is basically an Android app in a box. Many consumers who believed that the product would be better suited as a mobile app felt validated after our report, but there was one stickler in it that we needed to address: how we got the R1 launcher up and running on an Android phone. See, in our preliminary report, we mentioned that the Rabbit R1's launcher app is intended to be preinstalled in the firmware and be granted several privileged, system-level permissions. While that statement is still true, we should've clarified that the R1 launcher doesn't actually need those permissions. In fact, none of the system-level permissions that the R1 launcher requests are at all necessary for the app to perform its core functionality.
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the supply-and-demand department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: CoreWeave, the GPU infrastructure provider that began life as a cryptocurrency mining operation, this week raised $1.1 billion in new funding from investors, including Coatue, Fidelity and Altimeter Capital. The round brings its valuation to $19 billion post-money and its total raised to $5 billion in debt and equity -- a remarkable figure for a company that's less than 10 years old. It's not just CoreWeave. Lambda Labs, which also offers an array of cloud-hosted GPU instances, in early April secured a "special purpose financing vehicle" of up to $500 million, months after closing a $320 million Series C round. The nonprofit Voltage Park, backed by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, last October announced that it's investing $500 million in GPU-backed data centers. And Together AI, a cloud GPU host that also conducts generative AI research, in March landed $106 million in a Salesforce-led round.
So why all the enthusiasm for -- and cash pouring into -- the alternative cloud space? The answer, as you might expect, is generative AI. As the generative AI boom times continue, so does the demand for the hardware to run and train generative AI models at scale. GPUs, architecturally, are the logical choice for training, fine-tuning and running models because they contain thousands of cores that can work in parallel to perform the linear algebra equations that make up generative models. But installing GPUs is expensive. So most devs and organizations turn to the cloud instead. Incumbents in the cloud computing space -- Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure -- offer no shortage of GPU and specialty hardware instances optimized for generative AI workloads. But for at least some models and projects, alternative clouds can end up being cheaper -- and delivering better availability.
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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the perspectives department: An anonymous reader shares an essay: Software designers refer to "the good enough principle." It means, simply put, that sometimes you should prioritise functionality over perfection. As a relentless imperfectionist, I'm inclined to embrace this idea. I gave this newsletter its name to encourage myself to post rough versions of my pieces rather than not to write them at all. When it comes to parenting, I'm a Winnicottian: I believe you shouldn't try to be the perfect mum or dad because there's no such thing. At work and in life, it's often true that the optimal strategy is not to strive for the optimal result, but to aim for what works and hope for the best.
The good enough can be a staging post to the perfect. The iPhone's camera was a "good enough" substitute for a compact camera. It did the job, but it wasn't as good as a Kodak or a Fuji. Until it was. Technological innovation often works like this, but the improvement curve isn't always as steep as with the smartphone camera. Sometimes we allow ourselves to get stuck with a product which is good enough to displace the competition, without fulfilling the same range of needs. The psychological and social ramifications can be profound.
Let's say you're a student and you use ChatGPT to write your essays for you. Give it the right prompts and it will produce pieces that are good enough to get the grade you need. That seems like a win: it saves you time and effort, presuming your tutors don't notice or don't care. Maybe you get through the whole of university this way. But be wary of this equilibrium. Over the longer term, you will be stunting the growth of your own mind. The struggle of turning inchoate thought into readable sentences and paragraphs is a powerful exercise for the brain. It's how you get better at thinking. It is thinking.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: Shell sold millions of carbon credits tied to CO2 removal that never took place [non-paywalled link] to Canada's largest oil sands companies, raising new doubts about a technology seen as crucial to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. FT: As part of a subsidy scheme to boost the industry, the Alberta provincial government allowed Shell to register and sell carbon credits equivalent to twice the volume of emissions avoided by its Quest carbon capture facility between 2015 and 2021, the province's registry shows. The subsidy was reduced and then ended in 2022.
As a result of the scheme, Shell was able to register 5.7mn credits that had no equivalent CO2 reductions, selling these to top oil sands producers and some of its own subsidiaries. Credits are typically equivalent to one tonne of CO2. Some of the largest buyers of the credits were Chevron, Canadian Natural Resources, ConocoPhillips, Imperial Oil and Suncor Energy. Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, criticised these "phantom credits." Stewart added: "Selling emissions credits for reductions that never happened ... literally makes climate change worse."
Shell said carbon capture played "an important role in helping to decarbonise industry and sectors where emissions cannot be avoided" and that realising its potential "requires creating market incentives now." Alberta's environment ministry said the crediting support scheme had not resulted in "additional emissions" by industrial polluters.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the what's-in-a-name department: A council has provoked the wrath of residents and linguists alike after announcing it would ban apostrophes on street signs to avoid problems with computer systems. From a report: North Yorkshire council is ditching the punctuation point after careful consideration, saying it can affect geographical databases. The council said all new street signs would be produced without one, regardless of whether they were used in the past. Some residents expressed reservations about removing the apostrophes, and said it risked "everything going downhill." They urged the authority to retain them.
Sam, a postal worker in Harrogate, a spa town in North Yorkshire, told the BBC that signs missing an apostrophe -- such as the nearby St Mary's Walk sign that had been erected in the town without it -- infuriated her. "I walk past the sign every day and it riles my blood to see inappropriate grammar or punctuation," she said. Though the updated St Mary's sign had no apostrophe, someone had graffitied an apostrophe back on to the sign with a marker pen, which the former teacher said was "brilliant." She suggested the council was providing a bad example to children who spend a long time learning the basics of grammar only to see it not being used correctly on street signs.
Dr Ellie Rye, a lecturer in English language and linguistics at the University of York, said apostrophes were a relatively new invention in our writing and, often, context allows people to understand their meaning. "If I say I live on St Mary's Walk, we're expecting a street name or an address of some kind." She said the change would matter to people who spend a long time teaching how we write English but that it was "less important in [verbal] communication."
OpenAI and Stack Overflow Partner To Bring More Technical Knowledge Into ChatGPT 2024-05-06 14:45:02
Hades 2 is now in Early Access, ready to overtake your evenings, lunch breaks, and weekends for the foreseeable future. Playing as Melinoë, you’re tasked with defeating Chronos, aka time itself, to rescue her family and defend Olympus. It’s quite a lot to take in, especially if you go unprepared. 
Once upon a time, developer Vicarious Visions was working on a follow-up to 2020's excellent remake collection, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2. The project would’ve consisted of remakes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4, which would’ve been dope. Unfortunately, according to a new investigation by YouTuber Liam Robertson… 
Players are currently having a tough time logging into Final Fantasy XIV after the MMORPG was hit with DDoS attacks on May 6. Square Enix has acknowledged the issue but hasn’t yet updated fans on when the outages will be fixed. 
As of Monday, May 6, Hades II is now available in Early Access. That’s an exciting development for fans eager to play the sequel to developer Supergiant Games’ 2020 action roguelite. But while plenty of gamers around the world will be diving into Early Access, I won’t be one of them. 
1998’s Metal Gear Solid is widely available via the recently released Master Collection containing it and a number of other essential Metal Gear titles. While this collection isn’t the best way to explore these games, given its lacking features and technical issues, the strengths of these classic titles often… 
Late Sunday evening, I logged onto Fortnite to enjoy all the newly added Star Wars content, solo-queuing up for a No Build quads match right away. As I waited for the battle bus to pick me up, I could hear one of my teammates loudly playing Canadian actor-turned-rapper Aubrey “Drake” Graham’s song, “The Heart Part 6,”… 
Last week, Arrowhead Studios announced that an upcoming update to its hit co-op shooter Helldivers 2 would require existing PC players on Steam to make a PlayStation Network account to continue playing. If they didn’t, they’d lose access to their Helldivers accounts, and that news did not land well. The move was bad… 
