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DudeAsInCool

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Posts posted by DudeAsInCool

  1. Tanima Mehrotra / Katia Temkin

    January is traditionally a slow time for albums. Singles are another story; the beginning of the year can be a quite lucrative time for pop artists to drop their lead singles. Perhaps it’s the whole new-year-new-era thing. Perhaps it’s because a January single release sets up nicely the spring album release, then the summer album tour. But to illustrate: For over half of 2023, the #1 spot on the Hot 100 was occupied by either Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” or Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” both of which were released in January.

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  2. Green USB-C cable

    Enlarge (credit: kate_sept2004 via Getty)

    Windows 11's big feature update in September included a long list of minor changes, plus the Copilot AI assistant; that update was followed by Windows 11 23H2 in late October, which reset the operating system's timeline for technical support and security updates but didn't add much else in and of itself. But Windows development never stops these days, and this month's Insider Preview builds have already shown us a few things that could end up in the stable version of the operating system in the next couple of months.

    One major addition, which rolled out to Dev Channel builds on January 11 and Beta Channel builds today, is support for 80Gbps USB 4 ports. These speeds are part of the USB4 Version 2.0 spec—named with the USB-IF's typical flair for clarity and consistency—that was published in 2022. Full 80Gbps speeds are still rare and will be for the foreseeable future, but Microsoft says that they'll be included in the Razer Blade 18 and a handful of other PCs with Intel's 14th-generation HX-series laptop processors. We'd expect the new speeds to proliferate slowly and mostly in high-end systems over the next few months and years.

    Another addition to that January 11 Dev Channel build is a change in how the Copilot generative AI assistant works. Normally, Copilot is launched by the user manually, either by clicking the icon on the taskbar, hitting the Win+C key combo, or (in some new PCs) by using the dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard. In recent Dev Channel builds, the Copilot window will open automatically on certain PCs as soon as you log in to Windows, becoming part of your default desktop unless you turn it off in Settings.

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  3. Apple's Vision Pro headset.

    Enlarge / Apple's Vision Pro headset. (credit: Samuel Axon)

    Apple's Vision Pro went up for preorder this morning at 8 am ET. As expected, shipment dates for preorders quickly backed up to March as initial supply was accounted for. Regardless of whether you're in for the start or taking a wait-and-see approach with Apple's ultra-pricey new device, though, we have access to a little more information about the device than we did before thanks to updates to the Apple Store website.

    The product page for Vision Pro reveals configurations and pricing, and a new specs page clarifies answers to some questions we've had for a while now.

    You'll find all the relevant new information below. We've also updated our "What to expect from Apple Vision Pro" roundup with new information from the specs page.

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  4. Hans Reiser letter to Fredrick Brennan

    Enlarge / A portion of the cover letter attached to Hans Reiser's response to Fredrick Brennan's prompt about his filesystem's obsolescence. (credit: Fredrick Brennan)

    With the ReiserFS recently considered obsolete and slated for removal from the Linux kernel entirely, Fredrick R. Brennan, font designer and (now regretful) founder of 8chan, wrote to the filesystem's creator, Hans Reiser, asking if he wanted to reply to the discussion on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML).

    Reiser, 59, serving a potential life sentence in a California prison for the 2006 murder of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser, wrote back with more than 6,500 words, which Brennan then forwarded to the LKML. It's not often you see somebody apologize for killing their wife, explain their coding decisions around balanced trees versus extensible hashing, and suggest that elementary schools offer the same kinds of emotional intelligence curriculum that they've worked through in prison, in a software mailing list. It's quite a document.

    What follows is a relative summary of Reiser's letter, dated November 26, 2023, which we first saw on the Phoronix blog, and which, by all appearances, is authentic (or would otherwise be an epic bit of minutely detailed fraud for no particular reason). It covers, broadly, why Reiser believes his system failed to gain mindshare among Linux users, beyond the most obvious reason. This leads Reiser to detail the technical possibilities, his interpersonal and leadership failings and development, some lingering regrets about dealings with SUSE and Oracle and the Linux community at large, and other topics, including modern Russian geopolitics.

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  5. A photo of David L. Mills taken by Raul654 on April 27, 2005.

    Enlarge / A photo of David L. Mills taken by Raul654 on April 27, 2005. (credit: Raul654 / Benj Edwards / Getty Images)

    On Thursday, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf announced that Dr. David L. Mills, the inventor of Network Time Protocol (NTP), died peacefully at age 85 on January 17, 2024. The announcement came in a post on the Internet Society mailing list after Cerf was informed of David's death by Mills' daughter, Leigh.

    "He was such an iconic element of the early Internet," wrote Cerf.

    Dr. Mills created the Network Time Protocol (NTP) in 1985 to address a crucial challenge in the online world: the synchronization of time across different computer systems and networks. In a digital environment where computers and servers are located all over the world, each with its own internal clock, there's a significant need for a standardized and accurate timekeeping system.

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  6. Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says

    Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Getty Images)

    It's not just you—Google Search is getting worse. A new study from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence looked at Google search quality for a year and found the company is losing the war against SEO (Search Engine Optimization) spam.

    The study, first spotted by 404media, "monitored Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo for a year on 7,392 product review queries," using queries like "best headphones" to study search results. The focus was on product review queries because the researchers felt those searches were "particularly vulnerable to affiliate marketing due to its inherent conflict of interest between users, search providers, and content providers."

    Overall, the study found that "the majority of high-ranking product reviews in the result pages of commercial search engines (SERPs) use affiliate marketing, and significant amounts are outright SEO product review spam." Search engines occasionally update their ranking algorithms to try to combat spam, but the study found that "search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam" and that there are "strong correlations between search engine rankings and affiliate marketing, as well as a trend toward simplified, repetitive, and potentially AI-generated content."

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  7. Amazon Echo Show 8 with Alexa

    Enlarge / Amazon demoed future generative AI capabilties for Alexa in September. (credit: Getty)

    “If this fails to get revenue, Alexa is in trouble.”

    A quote from an anonymous Amazon employee in a Wednesday Business Insider report paints a dire picture. Amazon needs its upcoming subscription version of Alexa to drive revenue in ways that its voice assistant never has before.

    Amazon declined Ars' request for comment on the report. But the opening quote in this article could have been uttered by anyone following voice assistants for the past year-plus. All voice assistants have struggled to drive revenue since people tend to use voice assistants for basic queries, like checking the weather, rather than transactions.

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  8. Samsung’s $1,300 phone might someday have fees for AI usage

    Enlarge (credit: Samsung)

    Samsung's big Galaxy S24 launch was yesterday, and to hear Samsung tell the story, the big highlight of the event was "Galaxy AI." Another view is that Galaxy AI is the usual bundle of baked-in Samsung features skinned on top of Android, but with generative AI being the hot new thing, Samsung went with AI-centric branding. Whatever value you want to place on Samsung's AI features, it might soon be an actual monetary one: Despite devices like the Galaxy S24 Ultra costing $1,300, Samsung might start charging for some of these AI phone features.

    The fine print on Samsung's Galaxy S24 promotional page features 44 asterisks and footnotes, and tucked away in that pile of caveats is the line "Galaxy AI features will be provided for free until the end of 2025 on supported Samsung Galaxy devices." That means Samsung reserves the right to charge for Galaxy AI after 2025.

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  9. Vision Pro will allow users to watch movies on a virtual TV set.

    Enlarge / Vision Pro will allow users to watch movies on a virtual TV set. (credit: Apple)

    In the leadup to Vision Pro preorders tomorrow, Apple has seemingly been prioritizing the message that the device will be an ideal way to watch movies and TV shows. In many ways, that might be true, but there's one major caveat: Netflix.

    In a statement reported by Bloomberg today, Netflix revealed that it does not plan to offer an app for Vision Pro. Instead, users will have to use a web-based interface to watch the streaming service. Additionally, it was later revealed that Spotify and YouTube will also lack Vision Pro apps.

    Netflix compares the experience to the Mac, but there are a few reasons this won't be an ideal experience for users. First, the iPad and iPhone mobile apps support offline viewing of downloaded videos. That's particularly handy for when you're flying, which is arguably one of the best use cases for Vision Pro.

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  10. Trapped-Under-Ice-1705427586.jpg

    An underrated thing about hardcore: You can sometimes identify a venue just by YouTube thumbnail — not even the video itself, but just the still image of a screengrab. I can’t think of any other genre of music where that’s the case. Most genres happen in the same clubs or arenas or festivals. Hardcore bands sometimes play in those spaces, but hardcore itself tends to happen in buildings that have character — DIY spaces that serve as refuges because for-profit entertainment venue’s can’t or won’t support everything that comes along with hardcore. Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church is one of those spaces. So is LA’s 1720 Warehouse. And you can always recognize Tampa’s Bryan Glazer FCC at a glance, even if it hosts only one weekend of hardcore bands per year. If your social-media feed is suddenly full of images of huge crowds acting reckless in a cavernous and unforgivingly lit community center, that means FYA Fest is happening.

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  11. Mel Butler

    Later this year, the Jesus And Mary Chain, the often-imitated and never-duplicated duo of Scottish brothers Jim and William Reid, will return with their new LP Glasgow Eyes. It’ll be the first Mary Chain album in seven years and their second since reuniting in 2007. We already posted the absolutely sick lead single “jamcod.” Today, the band follows that one with a new jam called “Chemical Animal.”

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  12. Coachella-1705505786.jpg

    I’ve been doing this for so long that I almost can’t remember a time when I wasn’t doing this. I’m lost in the sea of tiny-font band names. Somewhere amidst all that chaos, there must be a pattern. It must mean something. I close my eyes, and half-remembered band names dance across my mind. Eagulls. Raury. Dreamcar. Idris Elba. Were these people ever real? Did I just… imagine them? The universe is trying to tell us something. I just need to figure out what.

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