Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005
Hasbro Pulse website have been updated with information about an official giveaway as part of the
Transformers 40th Anniversary reunion screening. Read on for details! Transformers Fans – Roll out! Here is YOUR chance to win one of 10 EPIC Transformers bundles, including 2 tickets to the Transformers: 40th Anniversary Event at a participating cinema and a Transformers Generations HasLab Deathsaurus! You just have to enter your email address
on this link for a chance to win (available for US residents only)! Giveaway closes April 25th at 12:00 PM ET. The giveaway is also open for UK fans via
Hasbro Pulse UK.
The post
Till All Are One: Transformers 40th Anniversary Event Giveaway! appeared first on
Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the what-to-expect department: Ashley Capoot reports via CNBC: Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andMe, is considering a proposal to take the genetic testing company private after its stock price tumbled more than 95% from its 2021 highs. A late Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wojcicki is working with advisors and plans to speak with possible financing sources and partners. She "wishes to maintain control" of the company and will "not be willing to support any alternative transaction," the filing said. [...] In November, 23andMe received a deficiency letter from the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Department, which said the company had 180 days to bring its share price back above $1. The company's board of directors formed a "Special Committee" in late March to help explore options that could juice the stock.
A press release on Thursday said the committee was made aware of Wojcicki's interest in acquiring all of 23andMe's outstanding shares. Wojcicki owns shares that make up more than 20% of those outstanding, which equates to about 49% of voting power, the release said. "The Special Committee will carefully review Ms. Wojcicki's proposal when and if it is made available and evaluate it in light of other available strategic alternatives, including continuing to operate as a publicly traded company," the committee said in the release. "The Special Committee is committed to acting in the best interests of 23andMe and its shareholders." The committee has engaged Wells Fargo as its financial advisor, and it said there is "no assurance" that Wojcicki's offer would result in the proposed outcome.
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the Elo-rating-all-the-things department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Atlantic: In October 2003, Mark Zuckerberg created his first viral site: not Facebook, but FaceMash. Then a college freshman, he hacked into Harvard's online dorm directories, gathered a massive collection of students' headshots, and used them to create a website on which Harvard students could rate classmates by their attractiveness, literally and figuratively head-to-head. The site, a mean-spirited prank recounted in the opening scene of The Social Network, got so much traction so quickly that Harvard shut down his internet access within hours. The math that powered FaceMash -- and, by extension, set Zuckerberg on the path to building the world's dominant social-media empire -- was reportedly, of all things, a formula for ranking chess players: the Elo system.
Fundamentally, what an Elo rating does is predict the outcome of chess matches by assigning every player a number that fluctuates based purely on performance. If you beat a slightly higher-ranked player, your rating goes up a little, but if you beat a much higher-ranked player, your rating goes up a lot (and theirs, conversely, goes down a lot). The higher the rating, the more matches you should win. That is what Elo was designed for, at least. FaceMash and Zuckerberg aside, people have deployed Elo ratings for many sports -- soccer, football, basketball -- and for domains as varied as dating, finance, and primatology. If something can be turned into a competition, it has probably been Elo-ed. Somehow, a simple chess algorithm has become an all-purpose tool for rating everything. In other words, when it comes to the preferred way to rate things, Elo ratings have the highest Elo rating. [...]
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the budget-cuts department: Women Who Code (WWC), a U.S.-based organization of 360,000 people supporting women who work in the tech sector, is shutting down due to a lack of funding. "It is with profound sadness that, today, on April 18, 2024, we are announcing the difficult decision to close Women Who Code, following a vote by the Board of Directors to dissolve the organization," the organization said in a blog post. "This decision has not been made lightly. It only comes after careful consideration of all options and is due to factors that have materially impacted our funding sources -- funds that were critical to continuing our programming and delivering on our mission. We understand that this news will come as a disappointment to many, and we want to express our deepest gratitude to each and every one of you who have been a part of our journey." The BBC reports: WWC was started 2011 by engineers who "were seeking connection and support for navigating the tech industry" in San Francisco. It became a nonprofit organization in 2013 and expanded globally. In a post announcing its closure, it said it had held more than 20,000 events and given out $3.5m in scholarships. A month before the closure, WWC had announced a conference for May, which has now been cancelled.
A spokesperson for WWC said: "We kept our programming moving forward while exploring all options." They would not comment on questions about the charity's funding. The most recent annual report, for 2022, showed the charity made almost $4m that year, while its expenses were just under $4.2m. WWC said that "while so much has been accomplished," their mission was not complete. It continued: "Our vision of a tech industry where diverse women and historically excluded people thrive at every level is not fulfilled."
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the step-in-the-right-direction department: An anonymous reader shares a report: The Biden administration is designating two "forever chemicals," man-made compounds that are linked to serious health risks, as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup to polluters from taxpayers. The new rule announced on Friday empowers the government to force the many companies that manufacture or use perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as PFOA, and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, known as PFOS, to monitor any releases into the environment and be responsible for cleaning them up. Those companies could face billions of dollars in liabilities.
[...] The announcement follows an extraordinary move last week from the E.P.A. mandating that water utilities reduce the PFAS in drinking water to near-zero levels. The agency has also proposed to designate seven additional PFAS chemicals as hazardous waste. "President Biden understands the threat that forever chemicals pose to the health of families across the country," Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the E.P.A., said. "Designating these chemicals under our Superfund authority will allow E.P.A. to address more contaminated sites, take earlier action, and expedite cleanups, all while ensuring polluters pay for the costs to clean up pollution threatening the health of communities."
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: Linus Torvalds, discussing the AI hype, in a conversation with Dirk Hohndel, Verizon's Head of the Open Source Program Office: Torvalds snarked, "It's hilarious to watch. Maybe I'll be replaced by an AI model!" As for Hohndel, he thinks most AI today is "autocorrect on steroids." Torvalds summed up his attitude as, "Let's wait 10 years and see where it actually goes before we make all these crazy announcements."
That's not to say the two men don't think AI will be helpful in the future. Indeed, Torvalds noted one good side effect already: "NVIDIA has gotten better at talking to Linux kernel developers and working with Linux memory management," because of its need for Linux to run AI's large language models (LLMs) efficiently.
Torvalds is also "looking forward to the tools actually to find bugs. We have a lot of tools, and we use them religiously, but making the tools smarter is not a bad thing. Using smarter tools is just the next inevitable step. We have tools that do kernel rewriting, with very complicated scripts, and pattern recognition. AI can be a huge help here because some of these tools are very hard to use because you have to specify things at a low enough level." Just be careful, Torvalds warns of "AI BS." Hohndel quickly quipped, "He meant beautiful science. You know, "Beautiful science in, beautiful science out."
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: Microsoft Research Asia earlier this week unveiled VASA-1, an AI model that can create a synchronized animated video of a person talking or singing from a single photo and an existing audio track. ArsTechnica: In the future, it could power virtual avatars that render locally and don't require video feeds -- or allow anyone with similar tools to take a photo of a person found online and make them appear to say whatever they want. "It paves the way for real-time engagements with lifelike avatars that emulate human conversational behaviors," reads the abstract of the accompanying research paper titled, "VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time." It's the work of Sicheng Xu, Guojun Chen, Yu-Xiao Guo, Jiaolong Yang, Chong Li, Zhenyu Zang, Yizhong Zhang, Xin Tong, and Baining Guo.
The VASA framework (short for "Visual Affective Skills Animator") uses machine learning to analyze a static image along with a speech audio clip. It is then able to generate a realistic video with precise facial expressions, head movements, and lip-syncing to the audio. It does not clone or simulate voices (like other Microsoft research) but relies on an existing audio input that could be specially recorded or spoken for a particular purpose.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Dragonflight Season 4 Content Update Notes
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Dragonflight Season 4 arrives to World of Warcraft on April 23!
DRAGONFLIGHT SEASON 4
Powerful rewards await in Season 4 to deliver the best of what the Dragonflight expansion offers. Jump into the new Mythic+ dungeon rotation, rally your forces for new challenges in raids, prepare for the new PvP season, and ready yourselves for The War Within. [
LEARN MORE]
Awakened Raids
Every two weeks during Dragonflight Season 4, one of the three Dragonflight raids will become Awakened: Vault of the Incarnates; Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible; or Amirdrassil, the Dream's Hope. Enemies within Awakened raids are stronger and drop upgraded loot with a higher item level.
Schedule
Week 1 & 2: Vault of the Incarnates
Week 3 & 4: Aberrus, the Shadow Crucible
Week 5 & 6: Amirdrassil, the Dream's Hope
Week 7+: All raids are Awakened
A buff that increases reputation gain with Dragonflight reputations will be enabled whenever a specific raid is Awakened:
Schedule
Vault of the Incarnates: Sign of Awakened Storms – Dragonscale Expedition, Maruuk Centaur, and Iskaara Tuskaar
Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible: Sign of Awakened Embers – Loamm Niffen, Soridormi, and Sabellian/Wrathion
Amirdrassil, the Dream's Hope: Sign of Awakened Dreams – Dream Wardens and Valdrakken Accord
All raids Awakened: All the above reputations are increased
< This article continues on their website >
Just like Echoes of the Fallen, Final Fantasy 16’s The Rising Tide DLC adds quite a few new pieces of gear for Clive to use. Among these is the Tonberry Knife, which uniquely deals low HP damage in exchange for inflicting high Will damage. Whether you want this blade for its stats or its glamour, there’s one required… 
Tom Curtin had just secured the video game of his dreams: a factory sealed first run copy of Konami’s original 1986 Castlevania for NES with a rare hang tab on the back of the box. There are only six currently known to exist and Curtin, together with his childhood friend, paid just over $90,000 for this one. Now he… 
Fallout is currently one of the biggest things in the world thanks to Amazon’s hit TV show. However, before all that, there was a time when Fallout as a franchise seemed dead. Then Bethesda stepped in, bought the IP in 2007, and announced plans to make Fallout 3, reviving the post-apocalyptic RPG series. And that’s… 
Spoilers for the Fallout show follow. 
Hades, Supergiant Games’ award-winning 2020 roguelite, was renowned for its excellent combat, beautiful art style, entrancing music, and very, very hot characters. You’d expect a game about Greek gods (who were purposefully attractive so that the normies of Ancient Greece had something to aspire towards) to include a… 
Final Fantasy 16’s (presumably) final DLC, The Rising Tide, is a fascinating case study on how fan speculation can wildly shape an audience’s expectations. On one hand, Square Enix and the folks at Creative Business Unit 3 never promised this DLC pack would impact the main storyline of the game. However, prerelease… 
The future of physical media took another blow as Target confirmed previously reported plans that it would stop offering physical DVDs in store and transition to only carrying a select number of films in brick-and-mortar locations during specific, limited times. However, the retail giant said games would be—for… 
