Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the another-one-bites-the-dust department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday its well-known "billion-dollar weather and climate disasters" database "will be retired," a move that will make it next to impossible for the public to track the cost of extreme weather and climate events. The weather, climate and oceans agency is also ending other products, it has recently announced, due in large part to staffing reductions. NOAA is narrowing the array of services it provides, with climate-related programs scrutinized especially closely.

The disasters database, which will be archived but no longer updated beyond 2024, has allowed taxpayers, media and researchers to track the cost of natural disasters -- spanning extreme events from hurricanes to hailstorms -- since 1980. Its discontinuation is another Trump-administration blow to the public's view into how fossil fuel pollution is changing the world around them and making extreme weather more costly. [...]

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the pushing-the-limits department: Alibaba Group researchers have developed "ZeroSearch," a technique that enables large language models to acquire search capabilities without using external search engines during training. The approach transforms LLMs into retrieval modules through supervised fine-tuning and employs a "curriculum-based rollout strategy" that gradually degrades generated document quality.

In tests across seven question-answering datasets, ZeroSearch matched or exceeded the performance [PDF] of models trained with real search engines. A 7B-parameter retrieval module achieved results comparable to Google Search, while a 14B-parameter version outperformed it. The cost savings are substantial: training with 64,000 search queries using Google Search via SerpAPI would cost approximately $586.70, compared to just $70.80 using a 14B-parameter simulation LLM on four A100 GPUs -- an 88% reduction.

The technique works with multiple model families including Qwen-2.5 and LLaMA-3.2. Researchers have released their code, datasets, and pre-trained models on GitHub and Hugging Face, potentially lowering barriers to entry for smaller AI companies developing sophisticated assistants.

Posted by from MMO Champion
WoW Hotfixes - May 8, 2025

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Classes

Hunter

Survival

Fixed an issue where Aspect of the Eagle variants of Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite were dealing less damage than intended.

Fixed an issue where casting Coordinated Assault at greater than 30 yards away could grant Howl of the Pack Leader twice.

Fixed an issue where Aspect of the Eagle was not correctly extending the range of Spirit Bond.

Dungeons and Raids

Liberation of Undermine

Mug’zee

Fixed an issue where placing Hot Mess on the stairs of the encounter would cause it to sometimes not reach the arena floor.

Player versus Player

Hunter

Master's Call now applies its effect to you and your pet when targeting your own pet.

Master's Call now correctly applies to you and your pet if you are targeting an enemy.

Master's Call now correctly applies to you and your pet if you are targeting nothing.

Command Pet will now maintain its overridden spell when entering arenas and other instances.

Survival

Fixed an issue causing Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite to not deal damage when cast onto targets in breakable crowd control.

Flanking Strike will now correctly fail to cast and not go on cooldown if your pet is rooted or crowd-controlled.

User Interface and Accessibility

Players in Random Battleground matches can no longer see the names of opposing members until the match begins.

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the ticket-closed department: President Trump on Thursday attacked a law signed by President Joe Biden aimed at expanding high-speed internet access, calling the effort "racist" and "totally unconstitutional" and threatening to end it "immediately." The New York TimesL: Mr. Trump's statement was one of the starkest examples yet of his slash-and-burn approach to dismantling the legacy of his immediate predecessor in this term in office. The Digital Equity Act, a little-known effort to improve high-speed internet access in communities with poor access, was tucked into the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that Mr. Biden signed into law early in his presidency.

The act was written to help many different groups, including veterans, older people and disabled and rural communities. But Mr. Trump, using the incendiary language that has been a trademark of his political career, denounced the law on Thursday for also seeking to improve internet access for ethnic and racial minorities, raging in a social media post that it amounted to providing "woke handouts based on race."

Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005


To our surprise, Amazon have updated a listing of a new Transformers Crash & Combine Heroes Optimus Prime & Bumblebee 2-pack. Sold as an Amazon exclusive this is a curious re-release of two Robots In Disguise 2015 molds. The Optimus Prime torso is a redeco of the Optimus Prime figure included in the RID 2015 Crash Combiners Wave 4 Grimlock / Optimus Prime (Primelock) and the Bumblebee legs are a straight yellow redeco of Dragstrip from the Dragstrip / Wildbreak (Dragbreak) pack. The packaging features Evergreen art for and the combined form doesn’t seem to have a name as with previous » Continue Reading.

The post Amazon Exclusive Transformers Crash & Combine Heroes Optimus Prime & Bumblebee Official Images appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the what-to-expect department: According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple has "made progress" on a chip for a product that could rival the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The company is also reportedly working on glasses that use augmented reality. The Verge reports: The chip is apparently based on the chips Apple uses for the Apple Watch, though the company has removed parts and is being designed in such a way that it can handle the "multiple cameras" that the smart glasses might have, Bloomberg reports. Apple wants mass production of the chip to start by the end of 2026 or sometime in 2027, so the glasses themselves could come out within that timeframe. [...] Apple is developing chips for camera-equipped Apple Watch and Airpods as well, and the goal is for those chips to be ready "by around 2027," Bloomberg says. The company is also developing new M-series chips and dedicated AI server chips, per the report.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the value-exchange department: In a recent interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned that AI is breaking the economic model of the web by decoupling content creation from value, with platforms like Google and OpenAI increasingly providing answers without driving traffic to original sources. He argued that unless AI companies start compensating creators, the web's content ecosystem will collapse -- calling most current AI investment a "money fire" with only a small fraction holding long-term value. Search Engine Land reports: Google's value exchange with content creators has collapsed, Prince said: "Ten years ago... for every two pages of a website that Google scraped, they would send you one visitor. ... That was the trade. ... Now, it takes six pages scraped to get one visitor." That drop reflects the rise of zero-click searches, which happen when searchers get answers directly on Google's search page. "Today, 75 percent of the queries... get answered without you leaving Google." This trend, long criticized by publishers and SEOs, is part of a broader concern: AI companies are using original content to generate answers that rarely/never drive traffic back to creators.

AI makes the problem worse. Large language models (LLMs) are accelerating the crisis, Prince said. AI companies scrape far more content per user interaction than Google ever has -- with even less return to creators. "What do you think it is for OpenAI? 250 to one. What do you think it is for Anthropic? Six thousand to one." "More and more the answers... won't lead you to the original source, it will be some derivative of that source." This situation threatens the sustainability of the web as we know it, Prince said: "If content creators can't derive value... then they're not going to create original content."

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Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
In new interviews, the devs behind Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 have explained why the popular career mode from the original THPS4 isn’t going to be included in the upcoming remake.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the no-longer-supported department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: RIP, 486 processor. You've had a long run since Intel released you back in 1989. While Microsoft stopped supporting you with the release of Windows XP in 2001, Linux kept you alive and well for another 20+ years. But all good things must come to an end, and with the forthcoming release of the Linux 6.15 kernel, the 486 and the first Pentium processors will be sunsetted.

Why? Linus Torvalds wrote recently on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), "I really get the feeling that it's time to leave i486 support behind. There's zero real reason for anybody to waste one second of development effort on this kind of issue." Senior Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar put Torvalds' remark into context, writing, "In the x86 architecture, we have various complicated hardware emulation facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very very few people are using with modern kernels. This compatibility glue is sometimes even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could be spent on other things." "This will be the first time Linux has dropped support for a major chip family since 2012, when Linux stopped supporting the 386 family," notes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. "Moving forward, the minimum supported x86 CPU will now be the original Pentium (P5) or newer, requiring the presence of the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) and the CMPXCHG8B (CX8) instruction. These features are absent in the older 486 and early 586 processors, such as the IDT WinChip and AMD Elan families."

That said, you can continue running Linux on Pentium CPUs, but you'll have to "run museum kernels," as Torvalds pointed out in 2022 when he first floated the idea of ending support for 486.

Posted by Ethan Gach from Kotaku
Have you heard the news? There’s a new Pope. Pope Leo XIV to be precise, aka Robert Francis Prevost. He was born in Chicago. Graduated a Villanova wildcat. Now he’s the first American Pope, which was such an honor to realize. Catholics make up less than 20 percent of the global population, but everyone’s got an…

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
Fallout’s highly anticipated Season 2 is done filming as confirmed by some of the stars of the show, including The Ghoul himself, Walton Goggins, who is now free to rip off all those prosthetics and smile. And that’s nice. I’m happy for you, Mr. Goggins.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the please-fasten-your-seatbelts department: A federal judge has allowed key parts of a class action lawsuit against Delta Air Lines to proceed, stemming from massive flight disruptions caused by CrowdStrike's faulty Windows update in July 2024. The Register reports: Delta blamed its reliance on Microsoft software and the CrowdStrike incident for its woes. However, according to the plaintiffs in the action (PDF), both companies offered the airline assistance, which Delta turned down. Customers of the Atlanta-based carrier affected by the delays and cancellations claim they struggled to secure refunds and compensation from the airline. The plaintiffs allege that "although Delta offered reimbursement of eligible expenses through their website and app, Delta failed to clarify that the customer would only be receiving a partial reimbursement."

"Furthermore, Delta did not disclose to its customers that acceptance of the partial reimbursement would release any legal claims the customer may have against Delta until after the customer 'click[ed] on the button to accept the partial reimbursement.'" The action concerns both US domestic and international travel. The former is covered by US Department of Transportation rules, which require airline agents to "inform customers of their right to a refund ... before making an offer for alternative transportation, travel credits, vouchers, or other compensation in lieu of refunds."

The latter claims come under the Montreal Convention, which is designed to be a single, universal treaty to govern airline liability. Delta, which estimated its operational losses at around half a billion dollars due to the outage, sought to dismiss the complaint. While the US District Judge, Mark H. Cohen, granted the airline's motion to dismiss some of the claims, he permitted others to proceed. These were Count I (breach of contract based on failure to refund) and Count XII (violation of the Montreal Convention).

Posted by from MMO Champion
Patch 11.1.7 PTR - Build 60672

Build 60672 has been deployed to the Public Test Realms.

Legacy of Arathor 11.1.7 PTR Development Notes - May 8, 2025

Blizzard has posted the Development Notes for Build 60672.



Achievement Changes

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Mounts

Collections

Anu'relos, Flame's Guidance (New) Account Wide.

The War Within

Delves

Overcharged Delver (New) Complete 4 out of the 6 Overcharged Delves. Toy: Redeployment Module. Account Wide.

Titan Console Overcharged Name changed from "Console Overcharged" to "Titan Console Overcharged". Collect enough Titan Discs to fully upgrade the Titan Console. Account Wide. Purchase enough Titan Discs to unlock all of the skills in the Overcharged Titan Console. Mount: OC91 Chariot. Account Wide.

Visions of N'Zoth Revisited

Expansion Features

Faceless Mask of Multitudes Obtain the Faceless Mask of Multitudes in a Revisited Vision.Account Wide.

Faceless Mask of the Burned Bridge Obtain the Faceless Mask of the Burned Bridge in a Revisited Vision.Account Wide.

Faceless Mask of the Daredevil Obtain the Faceless Mask of the Daredevil in a Revisited Vision.Account Wide.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the man-behind-the-curtain department: After gaining attention from Neowin and DistroWatch last week, the sole maintainer behind AnduinOS 1.3 -- a Linux distribution styled to resemble Windows 11 -- decided to reveal himself. He turns out to be Anduin Xue, a Microsoft software engineer, who has been working on the project as a personal, non-commercial endeavor built on Ubuntu. Neowin reports: As a Software Engineer 2 at Microsoft (he doesn't work on Windows), Anduin Xue says he's financially stable and sees no need to commercialize AnduinOS. Explaining the financial aspects of the project, he said: "Many have asked why I don't accept donations, how I profit, and if I plan to commercialize AnduinOS. Truthfully, I haven't thoroughly considered these issues. It's not my main job, and I don't plan to rely on it for a living. Each month, I dedicate only a few hours to maintaining it. Perhaps in the future, I might consider providing enterprise solutions based on AnduinOS, but I won't compromise its original simplicity. It has always been about providing myself with a comfortably themed Ubuntu."

In our coverage of the AnduinOS 1.3 release last week, one commenter pointed out that the distro is from China. For some, this will raise issues, but Anduin Xue addressed this in his blog post, too, saying that the source code is available to the public. For this reason, he told lacing the operating system with backdoors for the Chinese government would be "irrational and easily exposed." For those worried that the distribution may be abandoned, Anduin Xue said that he intends to continue supporting it and may even maintain it full-time if sponsorship or corporate cooperation emerges.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the there's-always-Starbucks department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Senate today voted along party lines to kill a Federal Communications Commission program to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren, with Democrats saying the Republican-led vote will make it harder for kids without reliable Internet access to complete their homework. The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify the hotspot rule, which was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2024 under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The program would be eliminated if the House version passes and President Trump signs the joint resolution of disapproval.

The Rosenworcel FCC's rule expanded E-Rate, a Universal Service Fund program, allowing schools and libraries to use E-Rate funding to lend out Wi-Fi hotspots and services that could be used off-premises. The FCC rule was titled, "Addressing the Homework Gap through the E-Rate Program," and the hotspot lending program was scheduled to begin in funding year 2025, which starts in July 2025. Today's Senate vote on the resolution of disapproval was 50-38. There was a 53-47 vote on Tuesday that allowed the Senate measure to proceed to the final step. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said on Tuesday that "this resolution would prevent millions of students, educators, and families from getting online." Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) called the Republican move "a cruel and shortsighted decision that will widen the digital divide and rob kids of the tools they need to succeed."

Posted by Brandon Morgan from Kotaku
If you spend any amount of time online, you’ll find that, as is common with anything cool on the internet, there’s a ton of discourse surrounding the Huntress in Path of Exile 2. Some find her incredible, myself included. Others think she’s weak, subpar, and squishy. To those doubters, I’d like to emphasize that I’m…

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Posted by Justin Clark from Kotaku
Usually in an RPG, when you think “absolute assbeating swordwielder” in a video game, you picture the likes of Cecil from Final Fantasy IV, Auron from FFX, or even someone like Hulkenberg from Metaphor ReFantazio. What you’re usually not thinking of is a tiny befreckled orphan girl who wins the Mia Goth soundalike…

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Posted by from MMO Champion
Tune in to PAX East This Friday - May 9

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Tune in to a special one-hour panel at PAX East hosted by Community Manager Kaivax live at 1:00 pm PDT (4:00 pm EDT) Friday, May 9 on the PAX official Twitch channel.

---

Attending the Convention?

For those attending in person, you’ll be able to see the panel live in the Main Theater on the third level of the convention center Friday, May 9 starting at 4:00 pm EDT.

You can also meet the panelists Saturday, May 10 at the Queue Room of Exhibit Hall C (level 0) from 2:00-4:00 pm EDT where they’ll be available to sign posters.

---

Follow Us on Social Media

Stay on top of everything World of Warcraft at PAX by following our official Instagram feed and social channels all weekend long.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the everything-getting-expensive department: An anonymous reader shares a report: When Microsoft announced new Surface devices earlier this week, we noted that there wasn't a lot of daylight between the starting prices of the new but lower-end devices ($799 for the 12-inch Surface Pro, $899 for the 13-inch Surface Laptop) and the starting prices of the older-but-higher-end Surfaces from last spring ($999 for both). It appears Microsoft has quietly solved this problem by discontinuing the 256GB versions of the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 and the 13-inch Surface Pro 11.

Microsoft's retail pages for both devices list only 512GB and 1TB configurations, with regular prices starting at $1,199. Though not technically a price hike -- the 512GB versions of both devices also cost $1,199 before -- it does amount to an effective price increase for last year's Surface hardware, especially given that both devices have user-replaceable storage that can easily be upgraded for less than the $200 that Microsoft charged for the 256GB-to-512GB upgrade.

The upshot is that the new Surface PCs make more sense now than they did on Tuesday in relative terms, but it's only because you'll pay more to buy a Surface Pro 11 or Surface Laptop 7 than you would before. The 15-inch version of the Surface Laptop 7 still lists a 256GB configuration and a $1,299 starting price, but the 256GB models are currently out of stock.

Posted by Brandon Morgan from Kotaku
Path of Exile 2 already offers a handful of enjoyable and powerful character classes—Witch, Druid, and Mercenary, for example—along with more to come as Early Access progresses. With the launch of the latest season—Dawn of the Hunt—the most significant content update to the game yet, we have yet another to play around…

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