Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the inadequate-protections department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Decrypt: The founder of online news publication TechCrunch has claimed that Coinbase's recent data breach "will lead to people dying," amid a wave of kidnap attempts targeting high-net-worth crypto holders. TechCrunch founder and venture capitalist Michael Arrington added that this should be a point of reflection for regulators to re-think the importance of know-your-customer (KYC), a process that requires users to confirm their identity to a platform. He also called for prison time for executives that fail to "adequately protect" customer information.
"This hack -- which includes home addresses and account balances -- will lead to people dying. It probably has already," he tweeted. "The human cost, denominated in misery, is much larger than the $400 million or so they think it will actually cost the company to reimburse people." [...] He believes that people are in immediate physical danger following the breach, which exposed data including names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, government-ID images, and more.
Arrington believes that in the wake of these attacks, crypto companies that handle user data need to be much more careful than they currently are. "Combining these KYC laws with corporate profit maximization and lax laws on penalties for hacks like these means these issues will continue to happen," he tweeted. "Both governments and corporations need to step up to stop this. As I said, the cost can only be measured in human suffering." Former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan pushed back on Arrington's position that executives should be punished, arguing that regulators are forcing KYC onto unwilling companies. "When enough people die, the laws may change," Arrington hit back.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the two-in-one department: Google on Tuesday unveiled Veo 3, an AI video generator that includes synchronized audio -- such as dialogue and animal sounds -- setting it apart from rivals like OpenAI's Sora. The company also launched Imagen 4 for high-quality image generation, Flow for cinematic video creation, and made updates to its Veo 2 and Lyria 2 tools. CNBC reports: "Veo 3 excels from text and image prompting to real-world physics and accurate lip syncing," Eli Collins, Google DeepMind product vice president, said in a blog Tuesday. The video-audio AI tool is available Tuesday to U.S. subscribers of Google's new $249.99 per month Ultra subscription plan, which is geared toward hardcore AI enthusiasts. Veo 3 will also be available for users of Google's Vertex AI enterprise platform.
Google also announced Imagen 4, its latest image-generation tool, which the company said produces higher-quality images through user prompts. Additionally, Google unveiled Flow, a new filmmaking tool that allows users to create cinematic videos by describing locations, shots and style preferences. Users can access the tool through Gemini, Whisk, Vertex AI and Workspace.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Patch 11.1.7 Expected Release Date
Patch 11.1.7 PTR - Build 60915
Build 60915 has been deployed to the Public Test Realms.
Legacy of Arathor 11.1.7 PTR Development Notes - May 20, 2025
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
The Legacy of Arathor PTR has been updated for the week. Happy testing!
Overcharged Delves
Adjusted tuning and spawning.
Stamina and a built in socket added to the Durable Information Storage Container belt.
Fixed a few bugs that could block quest progression for some players.
Spell Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Paladin (
Forums)
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the new-era-of-Search department: Google has unveiled a major overhaul of its search engine with the introduction of A.I. Mode -- a new feature that works like a chatbot, enabling users to ask follow-up questions and receive detailed, conversational answers. Announced at the I/O 2025 conference, the feature is now being rolled out to all Search users in the U.S. Engadget reports: Google first began previewing AI Mode with testers in its Labs program at the start of March. Since then, it has been gradually rolling out the feature to more people, including in recent weeks regular Search users. At its keynote today, Google shared a number of updates coming to AI Mode as well, including some new tools for shopping, as well as the ability to compare ticket prices for you and create custom charts and graphs for queries on finance and sports.
For the uninitiated, AI Mode is a chatbot built directly into Google Search. It lives in a separate tab, and was designed by the company to tackle more complicated queries than people have historically used its search engine to answer. For instance, you can use AI Mode to generate a comparison between different fitness trackers. Before today, the chatbot was powered by Gemini 2.0. Now it's running a custom version of Gemini 2.5. What's more, Google plans to bring many of AI Mode's capabilities to other parts of the Search experience.
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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the moving-forward department: Google today unveiled significant upgrades to its Gemini 2.5 AI models, introducing an experimental "Deep Think" reasoning mode for 2.5 Pro that allows the model to consider multiple hypotheses before responding. The new capability has achieved impressive results on complex benchmarks, scoring highly on the 2025 USA Mathematical Olympiad and leading on LiveCodeBench, a competition-level coding benchmark. Gemini 2.5 Pro also tops the WebDev Arena leaderboard with an ELO score of 1420.
"Based on Google's experience with AlphaGo, AI model responses improve when they're given more time to think," said Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind. The enhanced Gemini 2.5 Flash, Google's efficiency-focused model, has improved across reasoning, multimodality, and code benchmarks while using 20-30% fewer tokens. Both models now feature native audio capabilities with support for 24+ languages, thought summaries, and "thinking budgets" that let developers control token usage. Gemini 2.5 Flash is currently available in preview with general availability expected in early June, while Deep Think remains limited to trusted testers during safety evaluations.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the pushing-the-limit department: Google is adding AI-powered live translation to Meet, enabling participants to converse in their native languages while the system automatically translates in real time with the speaker's original vocal characteristics intact. Initially launching with English-Spanish translation this week, the technology processes speech with minimal delay, preserving tone, cadence, and expressions -- creating an effect similar to professional dubbing but with the speaker's own voice, the company announced at its developer conference Tuesday.
In some testings, WSJ found occasional limitations: initial sentences sometimes appear garbled before smoothing out, context-dependent words like "match" might translate imperfectly (rendered as "fight" in Spanish), and the slight delay can create confusing crosstalk with multiple participants. Google plans to extend support to Italian, German, and Portuguese in the coming weeks. The feature is rolling out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers now, with enterprise availability planned later this year. The company says that no meeting data is stored when translation is active, and conversation audio isn't used to train AI models.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Revisit Horrific Visions for New Challenges and Rewards
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Madness stirs once more! Return to N'Zoth's twisted versions of Stormwind and Orgrimmar in Horrific Visions Revisted and take on the new challenges within—complete objectives, collect Displaced Corrupted Mementos, and claim a dark trove of mounts, toys, transmogs, weapon enchantments, and more!
Whether powering up your Warband or venturing into the nightmare for the first time, now is the moment to walk willingly into the void and seize what lies beyond—maintain your Sanity or ultimately fail.
Unimaginable Horrors Lie Beyond
Speak with Soridormi, who has set up camp on the Coreway overlook in Dornogal to deliver you to the Tenebrous Gateway, where the Image of Wrathion will help you enter the void-corrupted visions of Orgrimmar or Stormwind.
Enter the madness alone, in the company of the new Construct of Soridormi companion, or rally your allies to help defend against the creeping decay of insanity. Click on the Bronze Hourglass after passing through the Portal of Horrific Visions to extend the invite to the insanity-immune Construct of Soridormi to help fill in the gaps as a Tank, DPS, or Healer.
< This article continues on their website >
The Pokémon card scene is getting out of control again. Things appeared to die down for a bit following a pandemic-fueled collecting frenzy, but new sets in 2025 are selling out and prices on the secondhand market are skyrocketing. And it’s coming to a head at GameStop, the unlikely new epicenter for Pokémon TCG…
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Switch 2 pre-orders have basically been sold out since they went live last month, but a lucky few might still be able to nab the new Nintendo console in person when it launches on June 5. GameStop, Best Buy, and others have promised limited quantities on site at certain stores when fans go to pick-up their midnight…
