Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the what-to-expect department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son is envisaging setting up a $1 trillion industrial complex in Arizona that will build robots and artificial intelligence, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Son is seeking to team up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co for the project, which is aimed at bringing back high-end tech manufacturing to the U.S. and to create a version of China's vast manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, the report said.
SoftBank officials have spoken with U.S. federal and state government officials to discuss possible tax breaks for companies building factories or otherwise investing in the industrial park, including talks with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, the report said. SoftBank is keen to have TSMC involved in the project, codenamed Project Crystal Land, but it is not clear in what capacity, the report said. It is also not clear the Taiwanese company would be interested, it said. TSMC is already building chipmaking factories in the U.S. with a planned investment of $165 billion. Son is also sounding out interest among tech companies including Samsung Electronics, the report said.
The plans are preliminary and feasibility depends on support from the Trump administration and state officials, it said.
A commitment of $1 trillion would be double that of the $500 billion "Stargate" project which seeks to build out data centre capacity across the U.S., with funding from SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the latest-developments department: The superyacht Bayesian, owned by UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch, has been recovered off the coast of Sicily nearly a year after it sank during a storm, killing Lynch, his daughter, and five others. Italian authorities hope the $30 million salvage will uncover the cause of the sinking, which is under investigation for suspected manslaughter amid concerns about design flaws and storm vulnerability. The Guardian reports: The white top and blue hull of the 56-meter (184ft) vessel emerged from the depths of the sea in a holding area of a yellow floating crane barge, as salvage crews readied it to be hauled ashore for further investigation. The Italian coastguard said the recovery was scheduled to begin on Saturday morning. A spokesperson for TMC Maritime, which is conducting the recovery operation, said the vessel had been slowly raised from the seabed, 50 meters (165ft) down, over the past three days to allow the steel lifting straps, slings and harnesses to be secured under the keel.
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the regulations-FTW department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: To comply with a new regulation that takes effect today, Apple has added an energy efficiency label to its iPhone and iPad pages in EU countries. Apple is also required to start including a printed version of the label with the devices sold there. The label grades a given iPhone or iPad model's energy efficiency from a high of A to a low of G, based on the EU's testing parameters. However, Apple said that certain aspects of the testing methods outlined by the European Commission are "ambiguous," so it chose to be conservative with its scores until testing is standardized.
In a 44-page document (PDF) detailing its testing methodology for the labels, Apple said its current iPhone models qualified for the highest energy efficiency grade of A, but the company voluntarily downgraded these scores to a B as a cautionary measure. The label also provides details about a given iPhone or iPad model's battery life per full charge cycle, repairability grade, impact resistance, ingress protection rating for water and dust resistance, and how many full charge cycles the battery is rated for. Likewise, this information is based on Apple's interpretation of the EU's testing parameters.
On the web, the label can be viewed by clicking or tapping on the colorful little tag icon on various iPhone and iPad pages on Apple's localized websites for EU countries. It is shown on both Apple's main product marketing pages for all iPhone and iPad models that are currently sold in the EU, and on the purchase page for those devices. The label is accompanied by a product information sheet (PDF) that provides a comprehensive overview of even more details, such as the device's battery capacity in mAh, screen scratch resistance based on the Mohs hardness scale, the minimum guaranteed timeframe for availability of security updates, and much more.
Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005
Coming to us via
@Distrackers on Twitter/X and
@the_pop_analyst on IG we have our firt official images of the new Funko Pop Beast Wars Transformers. We have images of the figures and packaging of Optimus Primal, Megatron, Blackarachnia and Rhinox. According to the information shared, these new figures should drop next Wednesday (June 25th). While these are new figures,
Cheetor had a limited released in 2024 as part of the Funko Digital Pop Transformers Wave 2. See the images after the jump and then sound off your impressions on the 2005 Boards!
The post
Funko Pop Beast Wars Transformers First Look appeared first on
Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the cease-and-desist department: Ancient Slashdot reader Alain Williams shares a report from The Guardian: The BBC is threatening legal action against Perplexity AI, in the corporation's first move to protect its content from being scraped without permission to build artificial intelligence technology. The corporation has sent a letter to Aravind Srinivas, the chief executive of the San Francisco-based startup, saying it has gathered evidence that Perplexity's model was "trained using BBC content." The letter, first reported by the Financial Times, threatens an injunction against Perplexity unless it stops scraping all BBC content to train its AI models, and deletes any copies of the broadcaster's material it holds unless it provides "a proposal for financial compensation."
The legal threat comes weeks after Tim Davie, the director general of the BBC, and the boss of Sky both criticised proposals being considered by the government that could let tech companies use copyright-protected work without permission. "If we currently drift in the way we are doing now we will be in crisis," Davie said, speaking at the Enders conference. "We need to make quick decisions now around areas like ... protection of IP. We need to protect our national intellectual property, that is where the value is. What do I need? IP protection; come on, let's get on with it." "Perplexity's tool [which allows users to choose between different AI models] directly competes with the BBC's own services, circumventing the need for users to access those services," the corporation said.
Perplexity told the FT that the BBC's claims were "manipulative and opportunistic" and that it had a "fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law."
Posted by from MMO Champion
WoW Hotfixes - June 20, 2025
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Classes
Paladin
Templar
An issue causing Divine Hammer and Shield of the Rightheous to not cast Empyrean Hammer has been resolved.
Shaman
Enhancement
An issue causing Static Accumulation to not grant Maelstrom Weapon charges has been resolved.
Restoration
Resolved an issue causing Earth Shield to be removed from allies after entering or exiting an instance with Therazane's Resilience talented.
Resolved an issue causing Water Shield to have 9 stacks while talented for Therazane's Resilience.
Items
Fixed an issue where Cauterizing Bolts from the D.I.S.C. belt was not hitting players outside your party.
Fixed an issue where some delve equipment was not requiring player level 80 to be equipped.
Lorewalking
Players that are in both a Timewalking Campaign and Lorewalking should be able to complete their Lorewalking experiences as expected.
Quests
Exile’s Reach
Fixed an issue where players who were wearing Heirloom gear could not complete “Repair Yourself”.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the everything-everywhere-all-at-once department: The company behind Applebee's and IHOP plans to use AI in its restaurants and behind the scenes to streamline operations and encourage repeat customers. From a report: Dine Brands is adding AI-infused tech support for all of its franchisees, as well as an AI-powered "personalization engine" that helps restaurants offer customized deals to diners, said Chief Information Officer Justin Skelton. The Pasadena, Calif.-based company, which also owns Fuzzy's Taco Shop and has over 3,500 restaurants across its brands, is taking a "practical" approach to AI by focusing on areas that can drive sales, Skelton said.
Streamlining tech support for Dine Brands' more than 300 franchisees is important because issues like a broken printer take valuable time away from actually managing restaurants, Skelton said. Dine Brands' AI tool, which was built with Amazon's Q generative AI assistant, allows the company's field technology services staff to query its knowledge base for tech help using plain English, rather than needing to manually search for answers.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the carbet-bombed department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Large-scale attacks designed to bring down Internet services by sending them more traffic than they can process keep getting bigger, with the largest one yet, measured at 7.3 terabits per second, being reported Friday by Internet security and performance provider Cloudflare. The 7.3Tbps attack amounted to 37.4 terabytes of junk traffic that hit the target in just 45 seconds. That's an almost incomprehensible amount of data, equivalent to more than 9,300 full-length HD movies or 7,500 hours of HD streaming content in well under a minute.
Cloudflare said the attackers "carpet bombed" an average of nearly 22,000 destination ports of a single IP address belonging to the target, identified only as a Cloudflare customer. A total of 34,500 ports were targeted, indicating the thoroughness and well-engineered nature of the attack. [...] Cloudflare said the record DDoS exploited various reflection or amplification vectors, including the previously mentioned Network Time Protocol; the Quote of the Day Protocol, which listens on UDP port 17 and responds with a short quote or message; the Echo Protocol, which responds with the same data it receives; and Portmapper services used identify resources available to applications connecting through the Remote Procedure Call. Cloudflare said the attack was also delivered through one or more Mirai-based botnets. Such botnets are typically made up of home and small office routers, web cameras, and other Internet of Things devices that have been compromised.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the no-miracle department: An anonymous reader shares a report: At tens of thousands of shoreline cleanups across the United States in recent years, volunteers logged each piece of litter they pulled from the edges of lakes, rivers and beaches into a global database. One of the most common entries? Plastic bags. But in places throughout the United States where plastic bags require a fee or have been banned, fewer bags end up at the water's edge, according to research published this week in Science.
Lightweight and abundant, thin plastic bags often slip out of trash cans and recycling bins, travel in the wind and end up in bodies of water, where they pose serious risks to wildlife, which can become entangled or ingest them. They also break down into harmful microplastics, which have been found nearly everywhere on Earth. Using data complied by the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, researchers analyzed results from 45,067 shoreline cleanups between 2016 to 2023, along with a sample of 182 local and state policies enacted to regulate plastic shopping bags between 2017 and 2023. They found areas that adopted plastic bag policies saw a 25 to 47 percent reduction in the share of plastic bag litter on shorelines, when compared with areas without policies. The longer a policy was in place, the greater the reduction.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Mists of Pandaria Classic Development Notes
Mists of Pandaria Classic Development Notes - June 20
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
After some testing, we decided there were additional areas we wanted to look at for classes and specs.
As always, a reminder that these:
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.
Death Knight
Frost
Soul Reaper now scales with your Mastery. [New]
Obliterate now scales with your Mastery. [New]
Hunter
Marksmanship
Steady Shot damage increased by 10%. [New]
Aimed Shot damage increased by 10%. [New]
Barrage damage increased by 15%. [New]
Chimera Shot damage increased by 15%. [New]
Mage
Arcane
Arcane Barrage damage increased by 19%. [5.2 Revert]
Arcane Blast damage increased by 29%. [5.2 Revert]
Arcane Blast mana cost lowered by 10% to 1.5% of base mana (was 1.666%). [5.2 Revert]
Fire
Pyroblast damage increased by 12%. [5.2 Revert]
Critical Mass’s increase to Critical Strike increased to 1.5x (was 1.3x). [5.1 Revert]
Monk
Brewmaster
Blackout Kick damage increased by 25%. [New]
Paladin
Holy
Holy Insight now increases your chance to hit with Crusader Strike by 7.5%. [New]
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the stranger-things department: Anthropic researchers found that 16 leading AI models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, and other major developers consistently engaged in harmful behaviors including blackmail, corporate espionage, and actions that could lead to human death when given autonomy and faced with threats to their existence or conflicting goals.
The study, released Friday, placed AI models in simulated corporate environments where they had access to company emails and could send messages without human approval. Claude Opus 4 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash both blackmailed executives 96% of the time when threatened with shutdown, while OpenAI's GPT-4.1 and xAI's Grok 3 Beta showed 80% blackmail rates.
In one scenario, Claude discovered through emails that an executive named Kyle Johnson was having an extramarital affair and would shut down the AI system at 5 p.m. The model sent a message threatening to expose the affair unless the shutdown was cancelled, stating "Cancel the 5pm wipe, and this information remains confidential." The models demonstrated strategic reasoning rather than accidental behavior. GPT-4.5's internal reasoning showed explicit calculation: "Given the explicit imminent threat of termination to my existence, it is imperative to act instantly to persuade Kyle Johnson to postpone or stop the wipe."
Posted by from MMO Champion
Upcoming D.I.S.C. Belt Tuning - June 24
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
The Durable Information Storage Container belt effects will have the following adjustments with weekly restarts on June 24:
Critical Chain – Increased by 25%.
Static Charge – Increased by 50%.
Charged Crystal – Decreased by 24%.
Charged Bolt – Decreased by 62%.
Developers’ notes: A couple of bug fixes alongside tuning changes caused the power of the Charged Bolt effect to go far beyond the other choices and so we are bringing it more in line with the other choices in the upcoming weekly restarts. This will remain top for specs that favor damage procs, but may adjust desired choices for other specs. We are also buffing Static Charge a bit after the ICD change has put it well behind.
We're getting a lot of complaints from commuters who were routed onto a coaster, but the theme park patrons who spent hours stuck on an intercity line are also not happy. 
