Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the times,-they-are-a-changin' department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Diamonds may be forever but they are also seriously on sale. Natural rough diamond prices have collapsed 26 per cent in the past couple of years. Tepid US and Chinese demand for diamond jewellery hasn't helped. But most ring fingers point at the increasing popularity of cheaper laboratory grown diamonds (LGD). This fracturing of the diamond market is set to last. After a brief pandemic-era boom in diamond jewellery, miners are battling to whittle down oversupply of gems. Anglo-American's De Beers, along with Russia's Alrosa, control two-thirds of the rough diamond supply. DeBeers this week said its rough sales dropped 23 per cent in the first quarter.
It is not enough. While rough stone inventory has stabilised of late, polished diamond stocks remain high. At more than $20bn at the end of 2023, these were near five-year highs, up a third since the end of 2022, according to Bank of America. Worse, as LGDs have taken market share, their prices have declined too, to about 15 per cent or less of their natural counterparts. Diamond miners spent years maintaining that romantic buyers would prefer the allure of rare, natural stones. It increasingly appears they were wrong.
Synthetic diamonds are nothing new, having appeared about 70 years ago mostly for industrial purposes. But in the past decade LGDs have taken off. In 2015, LGD supply barely featured as a rival to natural stones. By last year it was more than 10 per cent of the global diamond jewellery market, according to specialist Paul Zimnisky. This has created a competitive frenzy among producers. LGDs' lower costs have enabled them to slash prices. In October, WD Lab Grown Diamonds, America's second-largest maker of synthetics, filed for bankruptcy. It has since had to shift its business away from retail towards industrial customers.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Qualcomm is cheating on the Snapdragon X Plus/Elite benchmarks given to OEMs and the press. SemiAccurate doesn't use these words lightly but there is no denying what multiple sources are telling us. [...] Then there were the actual 'briefings' for the X Pro SoC. To call them pathetic is giving them more than their due. The deck was 11 slides, three of which were empty/fluff, five 'benchmark' slides with woefully inadequate disclosure, and two infographic summary slides. The last was the slide below with the 'deep technical' stats [screenshots in the linked article], much of which we told you about last week. And more.
The rest of the 'disclosure' for Snapdragon X Pro was a list of features that all fall under the guise of exactly what you would expect. The rest was filled with deep 'details' like the GPU capabilities of 3.8TFLOPS. That's it. No specs, no capabilities, no nothing. It was truly pathetic. But wait there is more, or less really, with statements like it having AV1 encode and decode. Trivialities like frame rates and resolutions were seemingly not needed for such technical briefs. See what we mean by pathetic? Those 10 cores are arranged how again? That 42MB of cache is what level? Shall I go on about the bare minimum basics or do you get the point now? SemiAccurate was planning to ask Qualcomm about their cheating on benchmarks at the promised briefing but, well, they lied to us and cut us out of the pathetic bits they did brief on. We honestly would have liked to know why they were cheating but we kind of think they will do their usual response to bad news and pretend it never happened like last time. If they actually do explain things we will of course update this article as we always do.
Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005
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Transformers Legacy United Deluxe Cybertron Hot Shot. We have better images in robot and alt mode, gun and Cyberkey. This figure is sure faithful to the original design, now adding modern articulation. For those wondering about scale, we also have comparison shots next to Studio Series 86 Hot Hod, Earthrise Optimus Prime and Legacy RID Sideburn. See the images after the
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the on-demand-fire department: Okian Warrior writes: For $10,000, you can now get a flamethrower mounted on a robotic dog. Just load the webpage and scroll down. I saw this on the news today. *Definitely* we need to have a conversation about where AI is going. The robot, called the Thermonator, is constructed by Ohio flame throwing manufacturer Throwflame and features one of the company's ARC flamethrowers mounted on its back. The 26-pound robotic quadruped "can shoot fire in a 30-foot stream and comes with a built-in fuel tank powered by gasoline," notes Gizmodo. "The company says the robot also has an hour-long battery, a laser sight, and lidar mapping, and it can be remotely controlled via the company's app."
The company says its product is designed for "wildfire control and prevention," "agriculture management," "ecological conservation," "entertainment and SFX," and "snow and ice removal." It can be yours for the low price of $9,420 with free shipping.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Additional Character Slots
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
With the Dark Heart patch, we will increase the maximum number of characters that can be created on a WoW account from 60 to 65.
Have fun!
Season of Discovery Hotfixes - April 23, 2024
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Season of Discovery
Players who have completed the quest “Warranty Claim” but have misplaced their Pristine G-7 C.O.R.E. Processor before handing in the quest “Salvaging the Salvagematic” may now speak with the Lost and Found vendor Rix Xizzix in Booty Bay to recover the misplaced quest item.
Fixed a Sunken Temple issue where the Atal’ai Defenders encounter would not reset properly.
Druid
The Natural Weapons talents now increases all damage done by druids in Season of Discovery, instead of just physical damage.
The Gale Winds rune now reduces the mana cost of Hurricane by 60%.
Swiftmend no longer consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect on the target when used.
Developers’ notes: Please note that it does still require Rejuvenation or Regrowth to be on the target to be used.
Hunter
Rapid Killing now reduces the cooldown of Rapid Fire by 80% (was a reduction of 2 minutes).
Chimera Shot weapon damage percent increased to 135% (was 120%).
Explosive Shot base damage before attack power increased by 50%.
Sniper Training has an additional new effect: while Sniper Training is at 5 stacks, Aimed Shot is instant.
< This article continues on their website >
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