Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: In an announcement that stunned New Zealand's research community, the country's center-right coalition government said it would divert half of the NZ$75 million Marsden Fund, the nation's sole funding source for fundamental science, to "research with economic benefits." From a report: Moreover, the fund would no longer support any social sciences and humanities research, and the expert panels considering these proposals would be disbanded.
Universities New Zealand, which represents the nation's eight universities, called the planned disinvestment in social science and humanities "astonishing." It was among several academic groups and many scientists calling for the government to reverse the unexpected decision.
In announcing the change, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins said the fund should focus on "core science" that supports economic growth and "a science sector that drives high-tech, high-productivity, high-value businesses and jobs."
Posted by from MMO Champion
Heed the Call of Siren Isle Beginning December 17
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Prepare to dive into mystery and mayhem with the newest content update in The War Within™— Siren Isle. Explore an enigmatic outdoor zone, procure new items and rewards for you and your alternate characters, engage in new campaign chapters—Dalaran epilogue and Lingering Shadows prologue to Undermine(d)—and more!
New Zone to Explore
As raging tempests batter against Siren Isle, set off on an expedition to face off against a weekly rotation of adversaries while unraveling baffling new mysteries surrounding the abandoned Kul Tiran Azerite mine.
It's up to you, intrepid adventurer, to discover the fate of those who once lived and worked here. Explore alongside goblin, earthen, and Arathi expedition teams to learn more about the "singing crystal" at Siren Isle's heart.
While battling through enemies new and old with daring bravado, earn a new currency—Flame-Blessed Iron—to trade for items like mounts, pets, gear, and transmogs. It can also be used to open one of three Excavation sites on the island, presenting a face-off against a formidable foe to earn unique rewards.
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Posted by from MMO Champion
Siren Isle Content Update Notes
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Prepare to dive into mystery and mayhem with the newest content update in The War Within— Siren Isle. Explore an enigmatic outdoor zone, procure new items and rewards for you and your alternate characters, engage in new campaign chapters—the Dalaran epilogue and Lingering Shadows prologue to Undermine(d)—and more!
ANSWER THE CALL OF SIREN ISLE
Explore alongside the goblin, earthen, and Arathi expedition teams to learn more about the "singing crystal" located at the heart of Siren Isle.
While battling through enemies new and old with daring bravado, earn a new currency—Flame-Blessed Iron—to trade for items like mounts, pets, gear, and transmogs. It can also be used to open one of three Excavation sites on the island, allowing players to kill a formidable foe and earn unique rewards.
A powerful new ring—Cyrce's Circlet—is available by completing the Siren Isle introductory quest line. By completing a series of quests, players can upgrade their ring over time to increase its item level and gain new powers to help them on Siren Isle.
Players can also earn Singing Citrines, which can be socketed in and out of Cyrce's Circlet. These Citrines can be mixed and matched to create powerful combinations, and the gems can be socketed and unsocketed as they see fit. [
LEARN MORE]
ARATHI EAR CUSTOMIZATIONS FOR HUMANS AND KUL TIRAN
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the would-you-look-at-that department: Nearly half of American teenagers say they are online "constantly," according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. The report was based on a survey of 1,391 U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 conducted from Sept. 18 to Oct. 10, 2024. The Associated Press reports: As in past years, YouTube was the single most popular platform teenagers used -- 90% said they watched videos on the site, down slightly from 95% in 2022. Nearly three-quarters said they visit YouTube every day. There was a slight downward trend in several popular apps teens used. For instance, 63% of teens said they used TikTok, down from 67% and Snapchat slipped to 55% from 59%.
This small decline could be due to pandemic-era restrictions easing up and kids having more time to see friends in person, but it's not enough to be truly meaningful. X saw the biggest decline among teenage users. Only 17% of teenagers said they use X, down from 23% in 2022, the year Elon Musk bought the platform. Reddit held steady at 14%. About 6% of teenagers said they use Threads, Meta's answer to X that launched in 2023. [...]
Meta's messaging service WhatsApp was a rare exception in that it saw the number of teenage users increase, to 23% from 17% in 2022. Pew also asked kids how often they use various online platforms. Small but significant numbers said they are on them âoealmost constantly.â For YouTube, 15% reported constant use, for TikTok, 16% and for Snapchat, 13%.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the next-generation-of-personal-computing department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Besides phones and tablets, Android is available on smartwatches, TVs, and even cars. Google today announced Android XR as the next form factor the operating system is coming to. Google is using the catch-all term of extended reality (XR) to describe virtual (VR), mixed (MR), and augmented reality (AR). Android XR is for all device types, including headsets that offer video or optical see-through, screen-less "AI glasses," and AR glasses with displays. Going into Android XR, Google believes it has a proven track record of creating platforms. That is more than just making an operating system for themselves, but also catering to OEM partners, cultivating a developer ecosystem, and managing an app store.
[...] Google says Android XR is the first OS built from the ground up with Gemini. Google and Samsung are starting with the headset, which both consider a good starting point. Samsung has a developer kit called Project Moohan (or "infinity" in Korean) that is lightweight, has an external battery, and powered by the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2. Google imagines Android XR headsets as offering an infinite desktop for productivity. In this scenario, you're at a desk with a physical keyboard and mouse. A few partners already have this dev kit and more are being distributed to partners starting this week. Meanwhile, first-party apps like Chrome, YouTube, Google TV, Google Photos, and Google Maps are being optimized for Android XR.
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the new-and-improved department: Google unveiled Gemini 2.0 yesterday, almost exactly one year after Google's initial Gemini launch. The new release offers enhanced multimodal capabilities like native image and audio output, real-time tool use, and advanced reasoning to enable agentic experiences, such as acting as a universal assistant or research companion. VentureBeat reports: During a recent press conference, Tulsee Doshi, director of product management for Gemini, outlined the system's enhanced capabilities while demonstrating real-time image generation and multilingual conversations. "Gemini 2.0 brings enhanced performance and new capabilities like native image and multilingual audio generation," Doshi explained. "It also has native intelligent tool use, which means that it can directly access Google products like search or even execute code."
The initial release centers on Gemini 2.0 Flash, an experimental version that Google claims operates at twice the speed of its predecessor while surpassing the capabilities of more powerful models. This represents a significant technical achievement, as previous speed improvements typically came at the cost of reduced functionality. Perhaps most significantly, Google introduced three prototype AI agents built on Gemini 2.0's architecture that demonstrate the company's vision for AI's future. Project Astra, an updated universal AI assistant, showcased its ability to maintain complex conversations across multiple languages while accessing Google tools and maintaining contextual memory of previous interactions. [...]
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the not-a-good-look department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware, written by Avram Piltch: Microsoft's Recall feature recently made its way back to Windows Insiders after having been pulled from test builds back in June, due to security and privacy concerns. The new version of Recall encrypts the screens it captures and, by default, it has a "Filter sensitive information," setting enabled, which is supposed to prevent it from recording any app or website that is showing credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other important financial / personal info. In my tests, however, this filter only worked in some situations (on two e-commerce sites), leaving a gaping hole in the protection it promises.
When I entered a credit card number and a random username / password into a Windows Notepad window, Recall captured it, despite the fact that I had text such as "Capital One Visa" right next to the numbers. Similarly, when I filled out a loan application PDF in Microsoft Edge, entering a social security number, name and DOB, Recall captured that. (Note that all info in these screenshots is made up). I also created my own HTML page with a web form that said, explicitly, "enter your credit card number below." The form had fields for Credit card type, number, CVC and expiration date. I thought this might trigger Recall to block it, but the software captured an image of my form filled out, complete with the credit card data. Recall did refuse to capture the credit card fields on the payment pages of Pimoroni and Adafruit. "So, when it came to real-world commerce sites that I visited, Recall got it right," adds Piltch. "However, what my experiment proves is that it's pretty much impossible for Microsoft's AI filter to identify every situation where sensitive information is on screen and avoid capturing it."
Posted by from MMO Champion
20th Anniversary Realms: Molten Core and Onyxia's Lair Now Live
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Who's ready to handle the heat? Players on new WoW Classic 20th Anniversary Edition Realms can now leap into the fire and face off against the Firelord, Ragnaros, in Molten Core and Onyxia in her lair. As a reminder, Anniversary Realms have no buff and debuff limits, so you can feel free to use every spell you can cast in a raid.
Molten Core
Zone: Burning Steppes
Level: 60
Bosses: 10
The Molten Core lies at the very bottom of Blackrock Depths. It is the heart of Blackrock Mountain and the exact spot where, long ago, in a desperate bid to turn the tide of the dwarven civil war, Emperor Thaurissan summoned the elemental Firelord, Ragnaros, into the world. Though the Firelord is incapable of straying far from the blazing Core, it is believed that his elemental minions command the Dark Iron dwarves, who are in the midst of creating armies out of living stone. The burning lake where Ragnaros lies sleeping acts as a rift connecting to the plane of fire, allowing the malicious elementals to pass through. Chief among Ragnaros’ agents is Majordomo Executus - for this cunning elemental is the only one capable of calling the Firelord from his slumber.
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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the tough-luck department: Yahoo laid off around 25% of its cybersecurity team -- known as The Paranoids -- over the last year, TechCrunch has learned. From the report: Overall, the company has laid off or lost through attrition 40 to 50 people from a total of 200 employees in the cybersecurity team since the start of 2024, according to multiple current and former Yahoo employees who spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity. (Yahoo is TechCrunch's parent company.)
The Paranoids are not the only team affected by the layoffs. Valeri Liborski, who was appointed Yahoo's chief technology officer in September, sent an email this week to employees announcing changes across the broader technology unit, including enterprise productivity and core services. The email to staff, which was obtained by TechCrunch, said: "This was a very difficult decision and one I have not taken lightly."
The Paranoids' so-called red team, or offensive security team -- which conducts cyberattack simulations to identify weaknesses in the company's network before external hackers can -- was eliminated entirely this week, and there have been at least three rounds of layoffs impacting the cybersecurity team this year, according to the sources.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Deep in the Canadian Arctic, scientists and entrepreneurs brave sub-zero temperatures, whipping winds and snowstorms to drill holes through the sea ice to pump out the seawater below and freeze it on the surface. The group from the UK start-up Real Ice is in Cambridge Bay, a tiny coastal village in Nunavut, to try to prove they can grow and restore Arctic sea ice.
Their ultimate plan is to thicken ice over more than 386,000 square miles of the Arctic -- an area more than twice the size of California -- with the aim of slowing down or even reversing summer ice loss and, in doing so, help to tackle the human-caused climate crisis. It's a bold plan, and one of many controversial geo-engineering proposals to save the planet's vulnerable polar regions that range from installing a giant underwater "curtain" to protect ice sheets, to sprinkling tiny glass beads to reflect away sunlight.
Some Arctic scientists and experts have criticized Real Ice's methods as unproven at scale, ecologically risky and a distraction from tackling the root cause of climate change: fossil fuels. But the company says its project is inspired by natural processes and offers a last chance to protect a disappearing ecosystem as the world fails to act swiftly on climate change.
FromSoftware isn’t done with Elden Ring yet. The hit open-world RPG that just got a GOTY-nominated expansion is coming back with a completely new spin-off in 2025. It’s called Elden Ring: Nightreign and it’s a co-op action adventure that looks as excellent as the game it’s based on.
During tonight’s Game Awards aka Geoff Keighley’s trailer-thon (that’s also a game awards show), Ico and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda showed off a small glimpse of a still-untitled sci-fi-game featuring a big mech, an evil-looking cloud of dark energy, and a person in a cool space suit.
We finally have our first taste of The Witcher 4 and it looks stunning in a new cinematic trailer that aired at The Game Awards 2024. The cinematic tease showed monster hunter Ciri stepping into mentor Geralt of Rivia’s shoes to take on a gnarly-looking beast in proper witcher fashion.
During the opening moments of tonight’s Game Awards 2024 event, Harrison Ford appeared on stage to hand out the award for Best Performance alongside Troy Baker—who plays the role Ford made famous in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle—and Bethesda’s Todd Howard.
As you explore the Zone, stumbling upon all manner of mutants and freelance Stalkers in search of mystery and money, you’ll inevitably eavesdrop on stories about stranger-than-usual anomalies—the stuff of legends. As it turns out, the Zone produces legendary artifacts in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl that…
