Computers & Linux News

Amazon Fire Max 11 - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 16:00
64GB, vivid colors, 14hr playtime.

3.5 Cup Food Chopper - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 15:57
Two speeds & pulse.

CES PC Makers Bet on AI To Rekindle Sales

SlashDot - Fri, 2024-01-12 15:40
PC and microchip companies struggling to get consumers to replace pandemic-era laptops offered a new feature to crowds this week at CES: AI. From a report: PC and chipmakers including AMD and Intel are betting that the so-called "neural processing units" now found in the latest chip designs will encourage consumers to once again pay for higher-end laptops. Adding additional AI capabilities could help take market share from Apple. "The conversations I'm having with customers are about 'how do I get my PC ready for what I think is coming in AI and going to be able to deliver,'" said Sam Burd, Dell Technologies' president of its PC business. Chipmakers built the NPU blocks because they can achieve a high level of performance for AI functions with relatively modest power needs. Today there are few applications that might take full advantage of the new capabilities, but more are coming, said David McAfee, corporate vice president and general manager of the client channel business at AMD. Among the few applications that can take advantage of such chips is the creative suite of software produced by Adobe. Intel hosted an "open house" where a handful of PC vendors showed off their latest laptops with demos designed to put the new capabilities on display. Machines from the likes of Dell and Lenovo were arrayed inside one of the cavernous ballrooms at the Venetian Convention Center on Las Vegas Boulevard.

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Ultra Power Hand Mixer - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 15:38
5 speeds, corded.

Smart Eye Massager - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 15:34
App controlled, heated eye mask.

300W Power Station - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 15:29
Portable, 8-ports, 110V outlet & flashlight.

55lb Adjustable Dumbbell - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 15:18
With contoured full rotation handle. 1pc.

A Popular FCC Benefit That Helps Millions Afford Internet Is Set to Expire by May - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 15:03
Without additional funding from Congress, program recipients could face higher internet bills later this year.

Are Fingerprints Unique? Not Really, AI-Based Study Finds

SlashDot - Fri, 2024-01-12 15:00
An anonymous reader shares a report: "Do you think that every fingerprint is actually unique? "It's a question that a professor asked Gabe Guo during a casual chat while he was stuck at home during the Covid-19 lockdowns, waiting to start his freshman year at Columbia University. "Little did I know that conversation would set the stage for the focus of my life for the next three years," Guo said. Guo, now an undergraduate senior in Columbia's department of computer science, led a team that did a study on the subject, with the professor, Wenyao Xu of the University of Buffalo, as one of his coauthors. Published this week in the journal Science Advances, the paper seemingly upends a long-accepted truth about fingerprints: They are not, Guo and his colleagues argue, all unique. In fact, journals rejected the work multiple times before the team appealed and eventually got it accepted at Science Advances. "There was a lot of pushback from the forensics community initially," recalled Guo, who had no background in forensics before the study. "For the first iteration or two of our paper, they said it's a well-known fact that no two fingerprints are alike. I guess that really helped to improve our study, because we just kept putting more data into it, (increasing accuracy) until eventually the evidence was incontrovertible," he said.

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Cordless Stick Vacuum - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 14:50
50 min battery for pet hair & carpet.

Graco Travel System - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 14:40
Car seat, pram & stroller in one.

What Counts as Plagiarism? Harvard President's Resignation Sparks Debate

SlashDot - Fri, 2024-01-12 14:20
Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned earlier this month over plagiarism claims, sparking an online debate over academic copying. While many say original writing remains essential, some researchers argue for more flexibility, as long as sources are clear. The affair has prompted vows of plagiarism reviews targeting faculty, including from billionaire Bill Ackman, whose wife faced similar allegations at MIT. Nature: Few would argue with the US government's definition, which calls plagiarism "the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit." But that seems to be where the agreement ends. Some plagiarism scholars say that Gay clearly copied text without proper attribution. She agreed to issue several corrections to her dissertation and other papers before resigning last week. For some, this was necessary to preserve public trust in science. "We all make the occasional mistake, but once it was shown that there were more than a few problems with her research, I think it was essential that president Gay stepped down," says Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard. Others argue that the alleged violations are at most minor omissions. They say that Gay, a political scientist, merely summarized the scientific literature in line with the norms of her field, with no bearing on her own scholarship. "The day the plagiarism allegations broke, the response in the hallway was kind of like, 'Well, I guess we're all plagiarists,'" says Alvin Tillery, a political scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who knew Gay during their time as graduate researchers. These disputes highlight a singular challenge in evaluating plagiarism allegations: the official definition does not differentiate between what some consider the innocuous borrowing of phrases and wholesale theft of ideas and prose. Some academics are now calling for rules to provide clarity. [...] What happened to Gay has prompted some scientists to question the value of requiring scholars to freshly summarize known facts in the introduction and methods sections of each new paper. In one approach, dubbed 'modular writing,' researchers could sample more liberally from the work of their peers to describe the broader scientific literature, provided that they cite the source. This could particularly benefit those whose first language is not English, theoretical physicist and author Sabine Hossenfelder wrote on the social-media platform X after Gay resigned. "It is entirely unnecessary that we ask more or less everyone to summarize the state of the art of their research area in their own words, over and over again, if minor updates on someone else's text would do," Hossenfelder wrote.

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Qualcomm CEO Says Leading Tech Requires 'Big Business in China'

SlashDot - Fri, 2024-01-12 13:40
Restrictive US policies limiting advanced chip exports to China have done little to dampen Qualcomm's enthusiasm for the world's second-largest economy. From a report: In an interview at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, CEO Cristiano Amon expressed confidence about Qualcomm's business in the country, its largest market by revenue. "If you have a leading technology, you're going to have a big business in China," he said. The San Diego-based firm finds itself in a difficult situation, as the White House and Congress ramp up a pressure campaign to curb the sale of US chips and chipmaking tools to China, citing national security concerns. The Biden administration has argued that China's access to advanced semiconductors could aid military advancements. Meanwhile, in China, government agencies and state-owned firms have widened their ban on Apple's iPhones for employees. Qualcomm is one of Apple's biggest suppliers. China remains the largest semiconductor market in the world, with sales in the country accounting for one-third of the global market, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

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Best Internet Providers in Roanoke, Virginia - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 13:24
Cox, Glo Fiber and T-Mobile Home Internet are your best bets for broadband in Roanoke. Here’s how the top Roanoke internet service providers compare.

The Race to Move Beyond Phone Apps Was In Full Swing at CES 2024 - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 13:22
Commentary: We got a glimpse of how tech companies are continuing to push for what's next beyond the smartphone.

Ubisoft Accidentally Used Text-to-Speech To Voice a Character in the New Prince of Persia Game

SlashDot - Fri, 2024-01-12 13:00
Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown launches next week, but players are likely to encounter an amusing bug as they make their way through the game. Engadget: One of the game's NPCs is voiced by a text-to-speech program, complete with the slightly robotic tones we've come to associate with these services. It's not quite Siri or Alexa, but it's close and certainly doesn't fit the game's Persian-inspired setting. The NPC-in-question is a tree spirit named Kalux and seems to be voiced by a TTS program that's available online for free and typically used by streamers. This isn't an "AI is coming for your jobs" type thing, but rather a mistake on Ubisoft's part, as each and every other NPC is attached to a voice actor. IGN notes that Kalux doesn't have a voice actor in the credits. Additionally, Kalux only has a few lines, so it likely won't be a tough fix to assign an actor to deliver that dialogue. Ubisoft has readied a day-one patch, but it won't handle the Kalux issue. Look for another patch in late January or early February that replaces the bot with a human.

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Best Credit Cards for People With No Credit in January 2024 - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 12:48
If you need to improve or repair your credit, these credit cards could pave the way.

Earfun, a Leader in Budget Earbuds, Is Finally Doing Over-Ear ANC Headphones - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 12:47
The Earfun Wave Pro headphones are coming in March. They'll have a list price of $80, are rated for up to 80 hours of battery life and support the LDAC audio codec.

Nab This Nespresso Bundle and Make Your Favorite Specialty Drinks at Home - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2024-01-12 12:29
Get the Nespresso Vertuo Next coffee and espresso maker, a milk frother, free coffee and a $50 Nespresso credit for just $170.

2023 Was Hottest Year Ever Recorded Globally, US Scientists Confirm

SlashDot - Fri, 2024-01-12 12:26
Last year was the hottest ever reliably recorded globally by a blistering margin, US scientists have confirmed, leaving researchers struggling to account for the severity of the heat and what it portends for the unfolding climate crisis. From a report: Last year was the world's hottest in records that stretch back to 1850, according to analyses released concurrently by Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) on Friday, with a record high in ocean temperatures and a new low in Antarctic sea ice extent. Noaa calculated that last year's global temperature was 1.35C (2.4F) hotter, on average, than the pre-industrial era, which is slightly less than the 1.48C (2.6F) increase that EU scientists, who also found 2023 was the hottest on record, came up with due to slightly different methodologies. A separate analysis of 2023 released on Friday by Berkeley Earth has the year at 1.54C above pre-industrial times, which is above the 1.5C (2.7F) warming limit that countries have agreed to keep to in order to avoid disastrous global heating impacts. This guardrail will need to be broken on a consistent basis, rather than one year, to be considered fully breached, however. The burning of fossil fuels and deforestation has driven the extraordinary warmth, which follows a string of hotter-than-average years in recent decades. Each decade over the past 40 years has been warmer than the last, Noaa said, with the most recent 10 years all making up the hottest 10 years ever recorded. Last year's record heat was further spurred by El Niño, a periodic climatic event that heats up parts of the Pacific Ocean and heightens global temperatures.

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