Posted by from MMO Champion
Cataclysm Classic: Hour of Twilight Now Live!
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Classic Patch 4.4.2 Notes
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Classic
Version 4.4.2 – Hour of Twilight
February 18, 2025
New Dungeon: End Time
This new 5-player Heroic dungeon begins the quest to save all with a look at the desolate future of Azeroth, should its defenders fail to stop Deathwing. End Time rewards iLvl 378 gear.
New Dungeon: Well of Eternity
In this new 5-player Heroic dungeon, adventurers travel back 10,000 years in a brazen attempt to retrieve the Dragon Soul. Well of Eternity rewards iLvl 378 gear.
New Dungeon: Hour of Twilight
This new 5-player Heroic dungeon sets the final stage by bringing players face-to-face with the Twilight’s Hammer in present-day Dragonblight, where Thrall and the Dragon Soul must be safely escorted to Wyrmrest Temple so that the assault on Deathwing can commence. Hour of Twilight rewards iLvl 378 gear.
New Raid: Dragon Soul
Players can take the fight to Wyrmrest Temple and beyond, assisting Thrall and the Dragon Aspects as they seek to bring an end to the Black Dragonflight once and for all.
The Dragon Soul raid will become available on Thursday, February 20 at 3:00 p.m. PST. Dragon Soul is a 10- or 25-player 8 boss raid and has two difficulty modes. Normal and Heroic difficulties reward iLvl 397 and 410 gear, respectively.
Elemental Rune Dungeons: Protocol Twilight
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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the state-of-play department: A new report released by Cisco finds that 97% of CEOs surveyed are planning AI integration. Similarly, 92% of companies recently surveyed by McKinsey plan to invest more in generative AI over the next three years. Fortune: To that end, many companies are seeking tech-savvy finance talent, according to a new report by software company Datarails. The researchers analyzed 6,000 job listings within the CFO's office -- CFO, controller, financial planning and analysis (FP&A), and accountant -- advertised on job search websites including LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed, Job2Careers, and ZipRecruiter.
Of the 1,000 job listings for CFOs in January 2025, 27% included AI in the job description. This compares to 8% mentions of AI in 1,000 CFO job listings at the same time last year. Take, for example, Peaks Healthcare Consulting which required a CFO candidate to "continuously learn and integrate AI to improve financial processes and decision making," Datarails notes in the report. Regarding FP&A professionals, in January 2025, 35% of analyst roles mentioned AI competency as a requirement, compared to 14% in January 2024, according to the report.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the up-next department: Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has updated its business registry information with key changes to personnel and operational scope, signaling a shift towards monetizing its cost-efficient-yet-powerful large language models. From a report: The Hangzhou-based firm's updated business scope includes "internet information services," according to business registry service Tianyancha. The move is the first sign of DeepSeek's desire to monetise its popular technology, according to Zhang Yi, founder and chief analyst at consultancy iiMedia.
With eyes on developing a business model, DeepSeek intends to shift away from being purely focused on research and development, Zhang added. "The move reflects that for a company like DeepSeek, which managed to accumulate technology and develop a product, monetisation is becoming a necessary next step," Zhang said. DeepSeek's previous business scope said it engages in engineering and AI software development, among others, hinting at a more research-driven approach.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the up-next department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second lunar mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The plan is to deploy a lander, a rover, and hopper to explore a site near the lunar south pole that could harbor water ice, and to put a communications satellite on lunar orbit. But the mission will also bring something that's never been installed on the moon or anywhere else in space before -- a fully functional 4G cellular network.
Point-to-point radio communications, which need a clear line of sight between transmitting and receiving antennas, have always been a backbone of both surface communications and the link back to Earth, starting with the Apollo program. Using point-to-point radio in space wasn't much of an issue in the past because there never have been that many points to connect. Usually, it was just a single spacecraft, a lander, or a rover talking to Earth. And they didn't need to send much data either. "They were based on [ultra high frequency] or [very high frequency] technologies connecting a small number of devices with relatively low data throughput," says Thierry Klein, president of Nokia Bell Labs Solutions Research, which was contracted by NASA to design a cellular network for the moon back in 2020.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the promising-signs department: A new family of superconductors is exciting physicists. Compounds containing nickel have been shown to carry electricity without resistance at the relatively high temperature of 45 kelvin (-228C) -- and without being squeezed under pressure. Nature: Physicists at the Southern University of Science and Technology (Sustech) in Shenzhen, China, observed the major hallmarks of superconductivity in a thin film of crystals of nickel oxide, which they grew in the laboratory. They published their work in Nature on 17 February. "There's a huge hope that we could eventually raise the critical temperature and make [such materials] more useful for applications," says Dafeng Li, a physicist at the City University of Hong Kong.
Nickelates now join two groups of ceramics -- copper-based cuprates and iron-based pnictides -- as 'unconventional superconductors' that operate at room pressure and temperatures as high as 150K (-123C). This new data point could help physicists to finally explain how high-temperature superconductors work, and ultimately to design materials that operate under ambient conditions. This would make technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging, radically cheaper and more efficient.
How unconventional superconductors operate at warmer temperatures remains largely a mystery, whereas the mechanism behind how some metals can carry electricity without resistance at colder temperatures, or extreme pressures, has been understood since 1957. The ability of the Sustech researchers to precisely engineer the material's properties is huge boon in trying to use nickelates to unravel the theory behind unconventional superconductivity, says Lilia Boeri, a physicist at the Sapienza University of Rome. "The idea that you have a system that you can sort of tune experimentally, is something quite exciting."
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: SCMP: Chinese scientists have developed a revolutionary repair technology that could make lithium-ion batteries last over six times longer. Announcing their discovery in the journal Nature on Wednesday, the researchers said this low-cost, eco-friendly technology could soon be ready to enter the market.
The batteries are key for many modern technologies, from smartphones to electric vehicles. However, as these batteries age, they often become less efficient -- a process that cold weather accelerates. The researchers said they could counter this problem with the "injection" of a special solution to rejuvenate "sick" batteries. At present, lithium-ion batteries rely on sophisticated materials used to generate lithium ions -- whose movement through electrolyte is key to their performance -- and then protect them to ensure a decent lifespan.
Typically these lithium ions move from the positive terminal to the negative when the battery is charging, a process which is then reversed when it is generating power. The battery is considered to have expired when the supply of lithium ions runs low -- for example some electric car batteries have a lifespan of around 1,500 charge cycles -- but other components in the battery still remain in good working order after this happens. This insight prompted the two lead researchers, Gao Yue and Peng Huisheng from Fudan University's macromolecular science department, to see if they could revive a battery by replenishing the supply of active lithium ions.
Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005
Coming to us via the official Blokees
Youtube,
Weibo,
Twitter and
Facebook accounts, we have mew promotional images and a new stop-motion video of the new Blokees Transformers Galaxy Version Defender Wave 2 – The Overthrow collection. These are small 5.5 cm tall “chibi” style figures with 14 articulation points, packaged in blind boxes. This new wave consists of 8 robots, 4 vehicles and 4 chase figures. Robots Bumblebee Wheeljack Ironhide (Shattered Glass version) Soundwave (Golden version) Starscream Inferno Bonecrusher Ultra Magnus (White Optimus Prime redeco) Vehicles Inferno Bonecrusher Bumblebee Hook Chase figures Metallic Starscream Shattered Glass Bumblebee Armored Coronation Starscream Armored
» Continue Reading.
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Blokees Transformers Galaxy Version Defender Wave 2 – The Overthrow Promotional Stop Motion & New Images appeared first on
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