Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the can-you-hear-the-smartness department: alternative_right shares a report from ScienceDaily: When the brain is under pressure, certain neural signals begin to move in sync -- much like a well-rehearsed orchestra. A new study from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) is the first to show how flexibly this neural synchrony adjusts to different situations and that this dynamic coordination is closely linked to cognitive abilities. "Specific signals in the midfrontal brain region are better synchronized in people with higher cognitive ability -- especially during demanding phases of reasoning," explained Professor Anna-Lena Schubert from JGU's Institute of Psychology, lead author of the study recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

The researchers focused on the midfrontal area of the brain and the measurable coordination of the so-called theta waves. These brainwaves oscillate between four and eight hertz and belong to the group of slower neural frequencies. "They tend to appear when the brain is particularly challenged such as during focused thinking or when we need to consciously control our behavior," said Schubert, who heads the Analysis and Modeling of Complex Data Lab at JGU. The 148 participants in the study, aged between 18 and 60, first completed tests assessing memory and intelligence before their brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). [...]

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Posted by from MMO Champion
Mists of Pandaria Classic Development Notes - June 16, 2025

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We have made additional adjustments that are now live on the beta based on the data gathered during the raid testing weekend. Thank you so much for your participation, your feedback, and your assistance in gathering data during the testing period.

A reminder that these changes:

Are subject to change.

The changes only affect PvE and have zero impact on Arenas and Battlegrounds.

The changes under each Spec’s name are only active for that spec even if the ability is available to multiple specs.

We want to set expectations here: In order to let these changes rest - outside of extreme cases - we’re not going to do additional adjustments until after our next Raid test.

Death Knight

Blood

Outbreak’s base cooldown for Blood Death Knights has been decreased to 30 seconds (was 60 seconds). [New]

Developer’s note: Blood Death Knights are strong at the start of the expansion so a buff to them may seem a bit odd, but this has much less to do with raiding performance and more to do with smoothing over the feeling in dungeons where they go between pulls and a player may not be able to drag mobs from the previous pull with them.

Frost

Howling Blast’s damage to targets around the primary target has been increased to 65% of the damage dealt (was 50%). [5.2 Revert]

Druid

Balance

Force of Nature for Balance Druids has had its damage increased by 9.1% to match the Moonkin Form adjustment last week. [New]

Guardian:

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the behind-the-scenes department: Google Cloud has attributed last week's widespread outage to a flawed code update in its Service Control system that triggered a global crash loop due to missing error handling and lack of feature flag protection. The Register reports: Google's explanation of the incident opens by informing readers that its APIs, and Google Cloud's, are served through our Google API management and control planes." Those two planes are distributed regionally and "are responsible for ensuring each API request that comes in is authorized, has the policy and appropriate checks (like quota) to meet their endpoints." The core binary that is part of this policy check system is known as "Service Control."

On May 29, Google added a new feature to Service Control, to enable "additional quota policy checks." "This code change and binary release went through our region by region rollout, but the code path that failed was never exercised during this rollout due to needing a policy change that would trigger the code," Google's incident report explains. The search monopolist appears to have had concerns about this change as it "came with a red-button to turn off that particular policy serving path." But the change "did not have appropriate error handling nor was it feature flag protected. Without the appropriate error handling, the null pointer caused the binary to crash."

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the major-layoffs department: Intel will lay off 15% to 20% of its factory workforce starting in July, potentially cutting over 10,000 jobs as part of a broader effort to streamline operations amid declining sales and mounting competitive pressure. "These are difficult actions but essential to meet our affordability challenges and current financial position of the company. It drives pain to every individual," Intel manufacturing Vice President Naga Chandrasekaran wrote to employees Saturday. "Removing organizational complexity and empowering our engineers will enable us to better serve the needs of our customers and strengthen our execution. We are making these decisions based on careful consideration of what's needed to position our business for the future." The company reiterated that "we will treat people with care and respect as we complete this important work." Oregon Live reports: Intel announced the pending layoffs in April and notified factory workers last week that the cuts would begin in July. It hadn't previously said just how deep the layoffs will go. The company had 109,000 employees at the end of 2024, but it's not clear how many of those worked in its factory division -- called Intel Foundry. The Foundry business includes a broad array of jobs, from technicians on the factory floor to specialized researchers who work years in advance to develop future generations of microprocessors.

Intel is planning major cuts in other parts of its business, too, but employees say the company hasn't specified how many jobs it will eliminate in each business unit. Workers say they believe the impacts will vary within departments. Overall, though, the layoffs will surely eliminate several thousand jobs -- and quite possibly more than 10,000.

Posted by Mechafire from TFW2005


Hasbro Transformers designer Mark Maher continues his behind the scenes looks on Instagram at new figure reveals with Age Of The Primes Deluxe Venin (Venom)! “Venin: any of various toxic substances in snake VENOM , but wait, this brightly colored baddie is a cicada! Eek!😱 Run for the hills!! The new insecticon battalion of cicada’s is coming to your shelf collection to wreak havoc, consume your energon, and install shear terror into the hearts of the Autobot do gooders! . Move over Kickback, theres a more attractive stud in the colony, and he is packing his electric-blaster that can » Continue Reading.

The post Age Of The Primes Deluxe Venin (Venom) Behind The Scenes appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the technical-difficulties department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Subscribers in Southern California of Spectrum's Internet service experienced outages over the weekend following what company officials said was an attempted theft of copper lines located in Van Nuys, a suburb located 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The people behind the incident thought they were targeting copper lines, the officials wrote in a statement Sunday. Instead, they cut into fiber optic cables. The cuts caused service disruptions for subscribers in Van Nuys and surrounding areas. Spectrum has since restored service and is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the people responsible. Spectrum will also credit affected customers one day of service on their next bill.

"Criminal acts of network vandalism have become an issue affecting the entire telecommunications industry, not just Spectrum, largely due to the increase in the price of precious metals," the officials wrote in a statement issued Sunday. "These acts of vandalism are not only a crime, but also affect our customers, local businesses and potentially emergency services. Spectrum's fiber lines do not include any copper." Outage information service Downdetector showed that thousands of subscribers in and around Van Nuys reported outages starting a little before noon on Sunday. Within about 12 hours, the complaint levels returned to normal. Spectrum officials told the Los Angeles Times that personnel had to splice thousands of fiber lines to restore service to affected subscribers.

Posted by from MMO Champion
Mists of Pandaria Classic Beta Stress Test - June 18

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We’ll be performing a stress test for Mists of Pandaria Classic on Wednesday, June 18, from 2:00pm - 4:00pm PDT. During this time, we ask players to jump in on the public test realm environment to help simulate the launch.

For the stress test, all races and classes will be available for creation along with level 85 templates and character copy. The starting quests will become active at 2:50pm PDT to allow players time to set-up and get ready.

Jump in, storm Pandaria, and help us make sure that people aren’t getting stuck on the ship. Players who do not have a beta invite are encouraged and welcomed to please help jump in and participate. And who knows, you might encounter some shenanigans along the way…

If you encounter any issues during the test, you can submit them through the bug reporting tool in-game. If there are any aspects you’d like to discuss, feel free to post in the Classic Discussion forum.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the spoiler-free department: Threads is testing a new feature that lets users hide spoiler content by blurring images or text, which can then be revealed with a tap. The Verge reports: Meta spokesperson Alec Booker told The Verge that this is a "global test," though it's not clear how many people will gain access to it. Spoilers will also look a bit different depending on which device you're using. On desktop, spoilers are hidden by a gray block, but they appear behind a bunch of floating dots on mobile (which you can see in the GIF embedded [here]). "This feature is currently optimized for mobile, but we're working to improve the experience for desktop," Booker said.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the proceed-with-caution department: A new Salesforce-led study found that LLM-based AI agents struggle with real-world CRM tasks, achieving only 58% success on simple tasks and dropping to 35% on multi-step ones. They also demonstrated poor confidentiality awareness. "Agents demonstrate low confidentiality awareness, which, while improvable through targeted prompting, often negatively impacts task performance," a paper published at the end of last month said. The Register reports: The Salesforce AI Research team argued that existing benchmarks failed to rigorously measure the capabilities or limitations of AI agents, and largely ignored an assessment of their ability to recognize sensitive information and adhere to appropriate data handling protocols.

The research unit's CRMArena-Pro tool is fed a data pipeline of realistic synthetic data to populate a Salesforce organization, which serves as the sandbox environment. The agent takes user queries and decides between an API call or a response to the users to get more clarification or provide answers.

"These findings suggest a significant gap between current LLM capabilities and the multifaceted demands of real-world enterprise scenarios," the paper said. [...] AI agents might well be useful, however, organizations should be wary of banking on any benefits before they are proven.

Posted by from MMO Champion
World of Warcraft Classic Survey: New Features and What's Next?

Blizzard has sent surveys to select players asking for feedback on potential new features and the future of World of Warcraft Classic. While these features are not confirmed, the survey gives us a glimpse into the ideas Blizzard is exploring for the next WoW Classic project.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Survey

Feature - Description

Playable Shamans on the Alliance Side - The introduction of Shaman class to the Alliance

Collections - A UI-based storage system for pets, mounts, and toys to free up inventory space

Account-Wide Collections - Making all pets, mounts, and toys available to all characters on your account

1v1 Duel Arenas - The ability to go into a special dueling area for 1v1 contests that are viewable by spectators

New Player Character Models - Character models similar to those used for player characters in modern World of Warcraft

In-game Events - New events that offer different small quests & casual gameplay around the world. These would release between large updates.

Pet Battles - Collect pets from the game world and have them compete head to head with other pets in turn-based battles

Leveling Professions Improvements - Ability to make more usable gear for yourself as you level and be able to craft it at level-appropriate tradeskill levels

New Class Abilities and Spells - Brand new class abilities and/or spells unique to this version of Classic

Honor Rewards Redesign - Move honor rewards away from the original WoW model and towards a more seasonal model where new honor rewards are added to coincide with new PvE raid tier updates

WoW Token - A secure and convenient way for players to exchange gold for game time or Battle.net Balance

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the PSA department: Thousands of American investors have lost millions of dollars to sophisticated pump-and-dump schemes involving small Chinese companies listed on Nasdaq, prompting the Justice Department to declare the fraud a priority under the Trump administration's white-collar enforcement program.

The scams recruit victims through social media ads and WhatsApp messages, directing them to purchase shares in obscure Chinese firms whose stock prices are artificially inflated before collapsing. Since 2020, nearly 60 China-based companies have conducted initial public offerings on Nasdaq raising $15 million or less each, with more than one-third experiencing sudden single-day price drops exceeding 50%. In one recent case, seven traders earned over $480 million by defrauding 600 victims who purchased shares in China Liberal Education Holdings.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the mission-driven department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: While Silicon Valley executives like those from Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI are grabbing headlines for trading their Brunello Cucinelli vests for Army Reserve uniforms, a quieter transformation has been underway in the U.S. Navy. How so? Well, the Navy's chief technology officer, Justin Fanelli, says he has spent the last two and a half years cutting through the red tape and shrinking the protracted procurement cycles that once made working with the military a nightmare for startups. The efforts represent a less visible but potentially more meaningful remaking that aims to see the government move faster and be smarter about where it's committing dollars.

"We're more open for business and partnerships than we've ever been before," Fanelli told TechCrunch in a recent episode of StrictlyVC Download. "We're humble and listening more than before, and we recognize that if an organization shows us how we can do business differently, we want that to be a partnership." Right now, many of these partnerships are being facilitated through what Fanelli calls the Navy's innovation adoption kit, a series of frameworks and tools that aim to bridge the so-called Valley of Death, where promising tech dies on its path from prototype to production. "Your granddaddy's government had a spaghetti chart for how to get in," Fanelli said. "Now it's a funnel, and we are saying, if you can show that you have outsized outcomes, then we want to designate you as an enterprise service."

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the breaking-news department: Tensions between OpenAI and Microsoft over the future of their famed AI partnership are flaring up. WSJ, minutes ago: OpenAI wants to loosen Microsoft's grip on its AI products and computing resources, and secure the tech giant's blessing for its conversion into a for-profit company. Microsoft's approval of the conversion is key to OpenAI's ability to raise more money and go public.

But the negotiations have been so difficult that in recent weeks, OpenAI's executives have discussed what they view as a nuclear option: accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior during their partnership, people familiar with the matter said. That effort could involve seeking federal regulatory review of the terms of the contract for potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public campaign, the people said.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the security-woes department: Researchers are cautioning users against clicking unsubscribe links embedded in email bodies, citing new data showing such actions can expose recipients to malicious websites and confirm active email addresses to attackers. DNSFilter found that one in every 644 clicks on unsubscribe links leads users to potentially malicious websites.

"You've left the safe, structured environment of your email client and entered the open web," TK Keanini, DNSFilter's chief technology officer, told WSJ. The risks range from confirming to bad actors that an email address belongs to an active user to redirecting victims to fake websites designed to steal login credentials or install malware. Clicking such links "can make you a bigger target in the future," said Michael Bargury, CTO of security company Zenity.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the growing-consensus department: A Dutch court on Monday confirmed a 2021 consumer watchdog's ruling saying that Apple had abused its dominant position by imposing unfair conditions on providers of dating apps in the App Store. From a report: The Rotterdam District Court ruled that the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) was therefore right to impose an order subject to a penalty for non-compliance. The court ruled that ACM was right in finding that dating app providers had to use Apple's own payment system, were not allowed to refer to payment options outside the App Store, and had to pay a 30% commission (15% for small providers) to Apple.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the trading-convenience-for-security department: Microsoft has disabled Windows Hello's ability to authenticate users in low-light environments through a recent security update that now requires both infrared sensors and color cameras to verify faces. The change forces the system to see a visible face through the webcam before completing authentication with IR sensors.

Windows Hello earlier relied solely on infrared sensors to create 3D facial scans, allowing the feature to work in complete darkness similar to iPhone's Face ID. Microsoft pushed the dual-camera requirement to address a spoofing vulnerability in the biometric system.

Posted by Randall Munroe from XKCD
Sure, this exoplanet we discovered may seem hostile to life, but our calculations suggest it's actually in the accretion disc's habitable zone.

Posted by Super_Megatron from TFW2005


TFcon is very pleased to welcome Michael Dobson the voice of Starscream in Transformers Armada, Energon and Cybertron plus Signal Flare in Energon and Brakedown in Cybertron as a guest at TFcon Toronto 2025. Michael will be taking part in a Q&A panel and autograph sessions at Canada’s Premiere Transformers Collectors Event all weekend long. Presented by The Chosen Prime. Tickets still available at www.tfcon.ca

The post Transformers voice actor Michael Dobson to attend TFcon Toronto 2025 appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the your-loss,-my-gain department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Japan is the latest nation hoping to tempt disgruntled US researchers alarmed by the Trump administration's hostile attitude to academia to relocate to the Land of the Rising Sun. The Japanese government aims to create an elite research environment, and has detailed a $693 million package to attract researchers from abroad, including those from America who may have seen their budgets slashed or who fear a clampdown on their academic freedom.

Posted by Matthew Inman from The Oatmeal
A comic about a crawlspace under a house.
View on my website