Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the E=mc2 department: "Albert Einstein was right," reports CNN. "There is an area at the edge of black holes where matter can no longer stay in orbit and instead falls in, as predicted by his theory of gravity."

The proof came by combining NASA's earth-orbiting NuSTAR telescope with the NICER telescope on the International Space Station to detect X-rays:

A team of astronomers has for the first time observed this area — called the "plunging region" — in a black hole about 10,000 light-years from Earth. "We've been ignoring this region, because we didn't have the data," said research scientist Andrew Mummery, lead author of the study published Thursday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "But now that we do, we couldn't explain it any other way."

Mummery — also a Fellow in Oxford's physics department — told CNN, "We went out searching for this one specifically — that was always the plan. We've argued about whether we'd ever be able to find it for a really long time. People said it would be impossible, so confirming it's there is really exciting."
Mummery described the plunging region as "like the edge of a waterfall."

Unlike the event horizon, which is closer to the center of the black hole and doesn't let anything escape, including light and radiation, in the "plunging region" light can still escape, but matter is doomed by the powerful gravitational pull, Mummery explained. The study's findings could help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of black holes. "We can really learn about them by studying this region, because it's right at the edge, so it gives us the most information," Mummery said...

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by Mechafire from TFW2005


Via Baidu we have what seems to be our first look at the previously-reported Decepticon Commander Pack containing Starscream, Soundwave and Shockwave. Unfortunately it seems to not be Voyager figures, but rather reuses of previous Cyberverse Warrior figures. Check out the pics and let us know what you think in the ongoing discussion thread.

The post Decepticon Commander Pack Possible First Look appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the I'm-feeling-lucky department: "We're migrating domains in batches..." announced web-hosting company Squarespace earlier this month.

"Squarespace has entered into an agreement to become the new home for Google Domains customers. When your domain transitions from Google to Squarespace, you'll become a Squarespace customer and manage your domain through an account with us."

Slashdot reader shortyadamk shares an email sent today to a Google Domains customer:

"Today your domain, xyz.com, migrated from Google Domains to Squarespace Domains.

"Your WHOIS contact details and billing information (if applicable) were migrated to Squarespace. Your DNS configuration remains unchanged.

"Your migrated domain will continue to work with Google Services such as Google Search Console. To support this, your account now has a domain verification record — one corresponding to each Google account that currently has access to the domain."

Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the star-wars department: America's Defense Department "is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space," reports the New York Times, "convinced that rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations pose a growing threat to U.S. troops and other military assets on the ground and U.S. satellites in orbit."

[T]he Defense Department is looking to acquire a new generation of ground- and space-based tools that will allow it to defend its satellite network from attack and, if necessary, to disrupt or disable enemy spacecraft in orbit, Pentagon officials have said in a series of interviews, speeches and recent statements... [T]he move to enhance warfighting capacity in space is driven mostly by China's expanding fleet of military tools in space... [U.S. officials are] moving ahead with an effort they are calling "responsible counterspace campaigning," an intentionally ambiguous term that avoids directly confirming that the United States intends to put its own weapons in space. But it also is meant to reflect this commitment by the United States to pursue its interest in space without creating massive debris fields that would result if an explosive device or missile were used to blow up an enemy satellite. That is what happened in 2007, when China used a missile to blow up a satellite in orbit. The United States, China, India and Russia all have tested such missiles. But the United States vowed in 2022 not to do any such antisatellite tests again.

The United States has also long had ground-based systems that allow it to jam radio signals, disrupting the ability of an enemy to communicate with its satellites, and is taking steps to modernize these systems. But under its new approach, the Pentagon is moving to take on an even more ambitious task: broadly suppress enemy threats in orbit in a fashion similar to what the Navy does in the oceans and the Air Force in the skies.

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the Cruise-controlled department: Bloomberg reports that self-driving car company Cruise "reached an $8 million to $12 million settlement with a pedestrian who was dragged by one of its self-driving vehicles in San Francisco, according to a person familiar with the situation."

The settlement was struck earlier this year and the woman is out of the hospital, said the person, who declined to be identified discussing a private matter. In the October incident, the pedestrian crossing the road was struck by another vehicle before landing in front of one of GM's Cruise vehicles. The robotaxi braked hard but ran over the person. It then pulled over for safety, driving 20 feet at a speed of up to seven miles per hour with the pedestrian still under the car.

The incident "contributed to the company being blocked from operating in San Francisco and halting its operations around the country for months," reports the Washington Post:

The company initially told reporters that the car had stopped just after rolling over the pedestrian, but the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates permits for self-driving cars, later said Cruise had covered up the truth that its car actually kept going and dragged the woman. The crash and the questions about what Cruise knew and disclosed to investigators led to a firestorm of scrutiny on the company. Cruise pulled its vehicles off roads countrywide, laid off a quarter of its staff and in November its CEO Kyle Vogt stepped down. The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating the company, adding to a probe from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In Cruise's absence, Google's Waymo self-driving cars have become the only robotaxis operating in San Francisco.

in June, the company's president and chief technology officer Mohamed Elshenawy is slated to speak at a conference on artificial-intelligence quality in San Francisco.

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the sudo-intellectuals department: Security professional Bruce Schneier argues that large language models have the same vulnerability as phones in the 1970s exploited by John Draper.

"Data and control used the same channel," Schneier writes in Communications of the ACM. "That is, the commands that told the phone switch what to do were sent along the same path as voices."

Other forms of prompt injection involve the LLM receiving malicious instructions in its training data. Another example hides secret commands in Web pages. Any LLM application that processes emails or Web pages is vulnerable. Attackers can embed malicious commands in images and videos, so any system that processes those is vulnerable. Any LLM application that interacts with untrusted users — think of a chatbot embedded in a website — will be vulnerable to attack. It's hard to think of an LLM application that isn't vulnerable in some way.

Individual attacks are easy to prevent once discovered and publicized, but there are an infinite number of them and no way to block them as a class. The real problem here is the same one that plagued the pre-SS7 phone network: the commingling of data and commands. As long as the data — whether it be training data, text prompts, or other input into the LLM — is mixed up with the commands that tell the LLM what to do, the system will be vulnerable. But unlike the phone system, we can't separate an LLM's data from its commands. One of the enormously powerful features of an LLM is that the data affects the code. We want the system to modify its operation when it gets new training data. We want it to change the way it works based on the commands we give it. The fact that LLMs self-modify based on their input data is a feature, not a bug. And it's the very thing that enables prompt injection.

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the can-you-hear-me-now department: A blind worker for the National Federation of the Blind said Sonos had a reputation for making products usable for people with disabilities, but that "Overnight they broke that trust," according to the Washington Post.
They're not the only angry customers about the latest update to Sonos's wireless speaker system. The newspaper notes that nonprofit worker Charles Knight is "among the Sonos die-hards who are furious at the new app that crippled their options to stream music, listen to an album all the way through or set a morning alarm clock."

After Sonos updated its app last week, Knight could no longer set or change his wake-up music alarm. Timers to turn off music were also missing. "Something as basic as an alarm is part of the feature set that users have had for 15 years," said Knight, who has spent thousands of dollars on six Sonos speakers for his bedroom, home office and kitchen. "It was just really badly thought out from start to finish." Some people who are blind also complained that the app omitted voice-control features they need.

What's happening to Sonos speaker owners is a cautionary tale. As more of your possessions rely on software — including your car, phone, TV, home thermostat or tractor — the manufacturer can ruin them with one shoddy update...

Sonos now says it's fixing problems and adding back missing features within days or weeks. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence acknowledged the company made some mistakes and said Sonos plans to earn back people's trust. "There are clearly people who are having an experience that is subpar," Spence said. "I would ask them to give us a chance to deliver the actions to address the concerns they've raised." Spence said that for years, customers' top complaint was the Sonos app was clunky and slow to connect to their speakers. Spence said the new app is zippier and easier for Sonos to update. (Some customers disputed that the new app is faster.)

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by Kotaku Staff from Kotaku
A game doesn’t have to be newly released for it to require some guidance to get through, as this week’s batch of tips will prove. From the OG Final Fantasy 7 to Metal Gear Solid 2, there’s some older games that people have been recently dipping into that may require some support to get through. Thats’ what we’re here…

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the false-advertising department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: There's a big debate in the tech world over whether artificial intelligence models should be "open source." Elon Musk, who helped found OpenAI in 2015, sued the startup and its chief executive, Sam Altman, on claims that the company had diverged from its mission of openness. The Biden administration is investigating the risks and benefits of open source models. Proponents of open source A.I. models say they're more equitable and safer for society, while detractors say they are more likely to be abused for malicious intent. One big hiccup in the debate? There's no agreed-upon definition of what open source A.I. actually means. And some are accusing A.I. companies of "openwashing" -- using the "open source" term disingenuously to make themselves look good. (Accusations of openwashing have previously been aimed at coding projects that used the open source label too loosely.)

In a blog post on Open Future, a European think tank supporting open sourcing, Alek Tarkowski wrote, "As the rules get written, one challenge is building sufficient guardrails against corporations' attempts at 'openwashing.'" Last month the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit that supports open-source software projects, cautioned that "this 'openwashing' trend threatens to undermine the very premise of openness -- the free sharing of knowledge to enable inspection, replication and collective advancement." Organizations that apply the label to their models may be taking very different approaches to openness. [...]

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by Kotaku Staff from Kotaku
Another week, another round of opinions and spicy takes for you to sift through. Rather than making you search the site and find them yourselves, however, we’ve gathered our best opinion pieces of the week right here. From Diablo IV’s loot game change making it a good game again to a wild Tetris story, we’ve got…

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by from MMO Champion
Cataclysm Classic Launch Notes

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The Cataclysm Classic pre-patch is coming to an end with the launch of Cataclysm Classic on Monday, May 20 at 3:00 p.m. PDT, and we’d like to share some notes on aspects of the expansion that players will want to know.

World Bosses

Poseidus, Mobus, Garr, Xariona, Akma’hat, and Julak-Doom will first begin spawning with the weekly reset the week of June 4. They’ll begin to appear alongside the Baradin Hold raid and its first boss, Argaloth.

Except Poseidus, who drops a mount, world bosses will drop item-level 346 pieces of unique gear alongside a recipe and a random iLvl 359 bind-on-equip epic. These bosses will eventually drop their item-level 359 unique gear when Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman unlock.

Chaos Orbs

In the Cataclysm Classic Beta, Chaos Orbs were Bind on Equip. They will be Bind on Pickup in Cataclysm Classic, just as they were in original Cataclysm.

Heroic Raids

In original Cataclysm, access to attempt Heroic Raids required first completing them on Normal difficulty. This is not the case in Cataclysm Classic – you can go straight into Heroic raiding.

PvP Availability and Rewards

In Cataclysm Classic PvP, the weekly caps for Valor and the seasonal cap for Conquest have been increased by roughly 60%. The rewards granted for certain activities have been adjusted:

The weekly cap for Valor is now 1600.

The initial cap for Conquest Points is now 4000 and increases by 4000 every week throughout the season.

The Random Cataclysm Heroic reward is 240 Valor Points.

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the legal-threats department: After Adobe threatened legal action, the Delta Emulator said it'll abandon its current logo for a different, yet-to-be-revealed mark. The issue centers around Delta's stylized letter "D", which the digital media giant says is too similar to its stylized letter "A". The Verge reports: On May 7th, Adobe's lawyers reached out to Delta with a firm but kindly written request to go find a different icon, an email that didn't contain an explicit threat or even use the word infringement -- it merely suggested that Delta might "not wish to confuse consumers or otherwise violate Adobe's rights or the law." But Adobe didn't wait for a reply. On May 8th, one day later, Testut got another email from Apple that suggested his app might be at risk because Adobe had reached out to allege Delta was infringing its intellectual property rights.

"We responded to both Apple and Adobe explaining our icon was a stylized Greek letter delta -- not an A -- but that we would update the Delta logo anyway to avoid confusion," Testut tells us. The icon you're seeing on the App Store now is just a temporary one, he says, as the team is still working on a new logo. "Both the App Store and AltStore versions have been updated with this temporary icon, but the plan is to update them to the final updated logo with Delta 1.6 once it's finished."

Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005


We are saddened to report that G1 comic artist Don Perlin has passed away on May 14th at 94, as confirmed by CBR.com and Mr. Bright’s daughter on Facebook. Mr. Perlin was the penciler on 19 issues of the original Marvel Transformers comic and the mini-series adaptation of The Transformers: The Movie, making him the second-most prolific artist on the series after José Delbo. Outside Transformers he was recognized as co-creator of Moon Knight and drew The Defenders for many years before being one of the major artistic forces at Valiant Comics where he would co-create Bloodshot. We offer our heartfelt condolences » Continue Reading.

The post G1 Marvel Comic Artist Don Perlin Has Passed Away appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the someone-call-Elizabeth-Holmes department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Proteins in the blood could warn people of cancer more than seven years before it is diagnosed, according to research [published in the journal Nature Communications]. Scientists at the University of Oxford studied blood samples from more than 44,000 people in the UK Biobank, including over 4,900 people who subsequently had a cancer diagnosis. They compared the proteins of people who did and did not go on to be diagnosed with cancer and identified 618 proteins linked to 19 types of cancer, including colon, lung, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and liver.

The study, funded by Cancer Research UK and published in Nature Communications, also found 107 proteins associated with cancers diagnosed more than seven years after the patient's blood sample was collected and 182 proteins that were strongly associated with a cancer diagnosis within three years. The authors concluded that some of these proteins could be used to detect cancer much earlier and potentially provide new treatment options, though further research was needed.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the power-to-the-people department: Karl Bode writes via Techdirt: Tired of being underserved and overbilled by shitty regional broadband monopolies, back in 2002 a coalition of local Utah governments formed UTOPIA -- (the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency). The inter-local agency collaborative venture then set about building an "open access" fiber network that allows any ISP to then come and compete on the shared network. Two decades later and the coalition just announced that 18 different ISPs now compete for Utah resident attention over a network that now covers 21 different Utah cities. In many instances, ISPs on the network are offering symmetrical (uncapped) gigabit fiber for as little as $45 a month (plus $30 network connection fee, so $75). Some ISPs are even offering symmetrical 10 Gbps fiber for around $150 a month: "Sumo Fiber, a veteran member of the UTOPIA Open Access Marketplace, is now offering 10 Gbps symmetrical for $119, plus a $30 UTOPIA Fiber infrastructure fee, bringing the total cost to $149 per month."

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005


Coming to us via @lamleygroup on Instagram and YouTube we can share for you our first in-hand images of the recently revealed Mattel Creations Hot Wheels Transformers Optimus Prime. This is an official sample sent by Mattel for review and we have a clear look a this unique transformable die-cast Hot Wheels Optimus Prime as well as his impressive packaging which is designed as a reversible box for you to display him in robot or alt mode. It will be up for pre-order on May 21, 2024 9am PT for $80.00 exclusively via Mattel Creations website. See the new images » Continue Reading.

The post Mattel Creations Hot Wheels Transformers Optimus Prime In-Hand Images appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by from MMO Champion
Cataclysm Expansion Recap - Patch by Patch

Blizzard has released a recap of Cataclysm's major storylines and features, including the new changes coming with the official launch on May 20.

Posted by from MMO Champion
Season of Discovery Developer Update - May 17

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Greetings,

The team has been hard at work on Season of Discovery and Cataclysm Classic. There’s a lot happening in Classic right now, and while we’ve been working incredibly hard, we’ve also been fairly quiet, so we felt it would be a good time to provide an update on a few things, including Season of Discovery Phase 4.

Phase 4 Release Update

Cutting straight to it, and as you have no doubt likely noticed, the World of Warcraft team has been delivering a lot of exciting content lately, and this will (of course) continue well through the next few months and beyond. As such, to land Phase 4 at just the right time, our current phase (Phase 3) is going to last longer than previous Season of Discovery content phases. We can’t share Phase 4’s release date just yet, and we know this news and the longer Phase 3 may be disappointing to some, but our timeline will ensure that our Classic team delivers an experience worthy of our players at the high-quality bar we are setting for ourselves.

We’re so very excited to share what’s next with you.

We also want to make sure that we take the time we need to deliver equally awesome experiences in both Season of Discovery and Cataclysm Classic, and give Cataclysm Classic’s launch the time it deserves to breathe, without players feeling the pressure of needing to choose between it and all of the other fun things that are happening in WoW right now. We understand our players love to plan, so we wanted to signal our intentions now and let you know that we intend to share the exact timing of Phase 4’s launch, and start discussing what it will include, as early as it is possible to do so.

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the welcome-back department: Western Digital has unveiled new 6TB external hard drives -- "the first new capacity point for this hard drive drive form factor in about seven years," reports Tom's Hardware. "There is a catch, though: the HDD is slow and will unlikely fit into any mobile PCs, so it looks like it will exclusively serve portable and specialized storage products." From the report: Western Digital's 6TB 2.5-inch HDD is currently used for the latest versions of the company's My Passport, Black P10, and G-Drive ArmorATD external storage devices and is not available separately. All of these drives (excluding the already very thick G-Drive ArmorATD) are thicker than their 5 TB predecessors, which may suggest that in a bid to increase the HDD's capacity, the manufacturer simply installed another platter and made the whole drive thicker instead of developing new platters with a higher areal density.

While this is a legitimate way to expand the capacity of a hard drive, it is necessary to note that 5TB 2.5-inch HDDs already feature a 15-mm z-height, which is the highest standard z-height for 2.5-inch form-factor storage devices. As a result, these 6TB 2.5-inch drives will unlikely fit into any desktop PC. When it comes to specifications of the latest My Passport, Black P10, and G-Drive ArmorATD external HDDs, Western Digital only discloses that they offer up to 130 MB/s read speed (just like their predecessors), feature a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (up to 5 GT/s) interface using either a modern USB Type-C or Micro USB Type-B connector and do not require an external power adapter.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the bleak-and-surreal department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian, written by Caroline Haskins: On May 7th and 8th in Washington, D.C., the city's biggest convention hall welcomed America's military-industrial complex, its top technology companies and its most outspoken justifiers of war crimes. Of course, that's not how they would describe it. It was the inaugural "AI Expo for National Competitiveness," hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project -- better known as the "techno-economic" thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference's lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that's best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump's family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces.

The conference hall was also filled with booths representing the U.S. military and dozens of its contractors, ranging from Booz Allen Hamilton to a random company that was described to me as Uber for airplane software. At industry conferences like these, powerful people tend to be more unfiltered – they assume they're in a safe space, among friends and peers. I was curious, what would they say about the AI-powered violence in Gaza, or what they think is the future of war?

< This article continues on their website >