DudeAsInCool
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The final two days of this year’s Blue Ridge Rock Festival were canceled due to a severe storm that swept through Virginia. Thursday’s portion of the fest ended early during Coheed And Cambria’s set. Friday was not canceled — Slipknot and Oliver Anthony were among the performances, though Till Lindemann dropped out last minute. On Saturday morning, festival reps announced that the final two days (Saturday and Sunday) would be canceled outright due to weather.
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The eclectic rock combo's new album Peace...Like a River was inspired by the introspection of Paul Simon and the unpredictability of Miles Davis
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"Jimmy was love. Every cell in his body was filled with joy. He smiled all the time, even when he was deeply ill," Jane Slagsvol writes on singer's official website
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A recent environmental report found Microsoft’s global water consumption spiked in a year to nearly 1.7 billion gallons
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Singer recently implored her former partner to let her see their son in a since-deleted post
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In case you hadn’t heard, Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album Guts dropped at midnight on Thursday, and so far it’s a hit. If you got one of Rodrigo’s vinyl variants, then you may have noticed four additional songs on the tracklist. The purple vinyl has a song called “Girl I’ve Always Been,” the black vinyl and red have “Obsessed,” white has “Scared of My Guitar,” and blue has “Stranger.”
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A new biography of Elon Musk, written by Walter Isaacson, reveals that the “mercurial man-child” has actually had not two, but three children with Grimes, his ex. The third child is named Techno Mechanicus (nicknamed Tau), and their existence has been kept private until now.
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Kid Cudi has announced a Star Trek collaboration launching in October. According to a press release, the “Boldly Be” campaign will include “Kid Cudi’s unique lens on music with an original song inspired by Star Trek, an interactive gaming component, and a bold fashion collaboration,” plus additional details to be announced at a later date.
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In July of last year, the New York City Council approved Beastie Boys Square on New York’s Lower East Side — at the corner of Ludlow and Rivington. Today, a special unveiling is taking place to commemorate Beastie Boys Square and 50 years of Hip Hop. Starting at noon ET, the live-streamed celebration will go on until about 2PM ET and will feature the surviving Beastie Boys members Mike Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock), Council Member Chris Marte, and a special guest DJ set by Jon Bless HiFi System.
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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Benj Edwards)
On Thursday, Microsoft announced that it will provide legal protection for customers who are sued for copyright infringement over content generated by the company's AI systems. This new policy, called the Copilot Copyright Commitment, is an expansion of Microsoft's existing intellectual property indemnification coverage, Reuters reports.
Microsoft's announcement comes as generative AI tools like ChatGPT have raised concerns about reproducing copyrighted material without proper attribution. Microsoft has heavily invested in AI through products like GitHub Copilot and Bing Chat that can generate original code, text, and images on demand. Its AI models have gained these capabilities by scraping publicly available data off of the Internet without seeking express permission from copyright holders.
By offering legal protection, Microsoft aims to give customers confidence in deploying its AI systems without worrying about potential copyright issues. The policy covers damages and legal fees, providing customers with an added layer of protection as generative AI sees rapid adoption across the tech industry.
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Enlarge / The Anthropic Claude logo. (credit: Anthropic / Benj Edwards)
On Thursday, AI-maker and OpenAI competitor Anthropic launched Claude Pro, a subscription-based version of its Claude.ai web-based AI assistant, which functions similarly to ChatGPT. It's available for $20/month in the US or 18 pounds/month in the UK, and it promises five-times-higher usage limits, priority access to Claude during high-traffic periods, and early access to new features as they emerge.
Like ChatGPT, Claude Pro can compose text, summarize, do analysis, solve logic puzzles, and more.
Claude.ai is what Anthropic offers as its conversational interface for its Claude 2 AI language model, similar to how ChatGPT provides an application wrapper for the underlying models GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. In February, OpenAI chose a subscription route for ChatGPT Plus, which for $20 a month also gives early access to new features, but it also unlocks access to GPT-4, which is OpenAI's most powerful language model.
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Enlarge / Keychron's new C3 Pro mechanical keyboard. (credit: Keychron)
It's not officially autumn, but any parent back to ushering their kid to school before starting their own day of responsibilities will tell you it feels like fall. Alongside the start of school are usually new tech product announcements. This week, I had my eyes on a new smattering of PC keyboards (as you may have heard, I could use an upgrade). But many keyboard announcements felt like more of the same.
Take Logitech's keyboard releases this week. On Tuesday, it announced the G Pro X TKL wireless (dongle, Bluetooth, or wired) mechanical keyboard. It's part of Logitech's high-end series of gaming peripherals, but those accessories tend to appeal to non-gaming power users, too. For example, I've had great success using some of Logitech's gaming keyboards for work, including low-profile ones that helped speed up my typing. That's not what you're getting with the new G Pro X TKL.
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Logitech's G Pro X TKL in magenta. [credit: Logitech ]
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(credit: Kevin Purdy)
If you're like our staff, you'll understand that a good cup of brewed coffee is a requirement every morning. Whether it's a simple French-pressed brew or an espresso-based drink with complex flavors and aromas, coffee has not only provided the fuel to get the Ars Technica staff through our daily tasks, but it has also become a ritual that helps us start the day anew and grounds us—pun intended—amid the chaos of the world.
We asked the Ars staff to show off their coffee-making setups and tips below—they range from low to high tech, from hand-cranked grinders to automatic machines and all points in between, but all these methods have one thing in common: They make awesome coffee.
John Timmer’s setup: Flavorful French press method
Buy The John Timmer French Press Setup
(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.)What I want from coffee-making equipment is purely a function of what I'm looking for from coffee. And that is as much flavor as you can possibly extract from beans that are roasted so dark that they risk absorbing all light and becoming a black hole. I want a thin sheen of random organic molecules floating on top of an explosion of bitter, complex flavors.
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Google's official Pixel 8 Pro image.
The Google Store has posted a promo page for the Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2 ahead of their October 4 launch, confirming the designs of both devices. Google accidentally leaked a bunch of 3D renders the other day, so now that the cat's out of the bag, Google went ahead and made it official.
We saw live pictures of the Pixel 8 Pro in May, so there isn't much to add about the device's design. But still, the video confirms what's coming next month. The biggest change is a switch to a flat screen instead of the distorted curved displays that flagship Android phones have been saddled with. There's also a dubiously useful temperature sensor on the back, which in May was demonstrated as useful for taking a person's body temperature by applying your phone directly to your forehead. The sides are still a shiny mirror finish on the Pro version.
We get a shot of the cheaper Pixel 8, too. This confirms it still has a satin finish instead of the mirror polish and continues to have only two cameras. It's also not getting the temperature sensor.
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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Last week, OpenAI published tips for educators in a promotional blog post that shows how some teachers are using ChatGPT as an educational aid, along with suggested prompts to get started. In a related FAQ, they also officially admit what we already know: AI writing detectors don't work, despite frequently being used to punish students with false positives.
In a section of the FAQ titled "Do AI detectors work?", OpenAI writes, "In short, no. While some (including OpenAI) have released tools that purport to detect AI-generated content, none of these have proven to reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-generated content."
In July, we covered in depth why AI writing detectors such as GPTZero don't work, with experts calling them "mostly snake oil." These detectors often yield false positives due to relying on unproven detection metrics. Ultimately, there is nothing special about AI-written text that always distinguishes it from human-written, and detectors can be defeated by rephrasing. That same month, OpenAI discontinued its AI Classifier, which was an experimental tool designed to detect AI-written text. It had an abysmal 26 percent accuracy rate.
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Enlarge / The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, 7800 XT, and 7600. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
Two big things have happened since we last updated our PC build guide in the spring. First, we got a batch of late-spring and summer midrange GPU launches, including AMD's Radeon RX 7600, 7700 XT, and 7800 XT, plus Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti. Second, Bethesda's Starfield finally dropped, prompting a whole bunch of people to ask, "Can my PC run Starfield?"
Starfield isn't an exceptionally demanding PC game, at least not by the standards set by buggy PC ports like The Last of Us. But it will give any PC more than 3 or 4 years old a serious workout, and it should serve as a decent yardstick for building a PC that can run this console generation's games fairly well.
Starfield for PC and Xbox
(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.)This guide will focus on just minor tweaks to our spring PC builds, since other component pricing hasn't changed much and there haven't been major CPU introductions since then (Intel's don't-call-them-14th-generation Core processors may be out within a few months, but on the desktop they'll be a mild refresh of 13th-gen, which was already a mild refresh of 12th-gen).
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The singer spoke about her new album to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1's New Music Daily
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Raye, Shygirl, and winner Ezra Collective also took the stage during the ceremony
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The song was inspired by band member Drew Taggart's real-life relationship
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With her hit song "Padam Padam," a bold new album, and a Vegas residency on the way, the Australian pop queen talks about enjoying an exciting new chapter of her career
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Bruce Hornsby has announced the 25th anniversary edition of his 1998 double album, Spirit Trail. Coming October 27, the 25th anniversary edition will contain a 3-CD and/or 3-LP set. Within the CD set comes the original double album, four previously unreleased songs, and over 70 minutes of previously unreleased live performances. The collection will also come in a clamshell box and include a 36-page book with new liner notes by Hornsby, lyrics, and photography by Danny Clinch. The original album and bonus material is all mastered by Bob Ludwig.
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In May, Killer Mike released MICHAEL, his first solo album since 2012’s R.A.P. Music. Today, he’s announcing an 18-track deluxe version, MICHAEL DELUXE, which contains four additional tracks from the MICHAEL sessions. The release — September 15 — will coincide with the album’s physical release on vinyl and CD. Along with the news is a new single, “Maynard Vignette” featuring T.I, JID, and Jacquees.
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On August 31, Mariah Carey started teasing the 30th anniversary of her studio album, Music Box. “Wind it up! It’s the anniversary of MUSIC BOX! A whopping whole 30 minutes since the album was first released,” Carey wrote on Twitter. “I’ll never forget creating this record, fully immersing myself in the music that would change my life and connect me with YOU, the lambily, in a way that bonded us forever.” Yesterday, Carey shared the three-disc tracklist, and today she announced plans to share an unreleased track produced by C+C (plus a remix) called “Workin’ Hard.”
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The record follows up their internet-melting single "WAP"
Watch Velocity Girl Reunite For First Show In 21 Years
in Music & Entertainment News
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Bubblegrunge standard-bearers Velocity Girl reunited in Washington, DC this weekend to headline the second night of the Black Cat’s 30th anniversary celebration. Last night’s performance marked the first time Velocity Girl had played live in more than two decades. (The Sub Pop-signed group broke up in 1996, and they reunited just once, in 2002.)
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