LEGO Horizon Adventures Review | The Vault Reviews
LEGO Horizon Adventures Review | The Vault Reviews
“Clocking in at a fairly short six-to-eight hours, Lego Horizon Adventures offers up frequent, brief bursts of fun with its excellent combat encounters. However, this is wrapped up in an experience that feels way too shallow and repetitive to recommend to anyone other than the most enthusiastic Horizon and Lego fans. It’s clear that the intention is to woo new, younger gamers to Sony’s flagship franchise, but if you already own Zero Dawn and Forbidden West on PlayStation, we can’t see any reason why you’d want to check this one out. Mind you, if all you’ve got is a Switch, then this endearingly light-hearted introduction will have to do for now. It could have been so much more, though.” – Ollie Reynolds | NintendoLife
Source link
#LEGO #Horizon #Adventures #Review #Vault #Reviews
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Emil ‘Bill’ Petrov trial: Slain mum Cindy Crossthwaite ‘repositioned’ after *********, court told
Emil ‘Bill’ Petrov trial: Slain mum Cindy Crossthwaite ‘repositioned’ after *********, court told
The trial of a man accused of the “horrific” ******* of his estranged wife has been told her body was repositioned and covered with a pink blanket.
Source link
#Emil #Bill #Petrov #trial #Slain #mum #Cindy #Crossthwaite #repositioned #********* #court #told
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
The PlayStation 5 just got a discount in time for the holidays
The PlayStation 5 just got a discount in time for the holidays
PlayStation announced its big holiday deal on Tuesday, discounting the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition by $70 from now until December 24, 2024.
The of the console will start at $380, down from its standard $450 price. That’s a pretty sizable discount on the latest version of the base edition PS5.
This deal is clearly targeted at holiday shoppers. ****** Friday is coming up, so this also serves as PlayStation hardware’s big savings for later this month. After Christmas, it’ll be back up to its regular price.
While getting a mainline console for under $400 these days is always worth checking out, the discount isn’t as drastic as it seems on the surface. For one, the vertical stand is sold separately. As this is the digital version, it also doesn’t come with a disc drive, which can also be bought separately. If you want the ability to play physical games or have flexibility in setting up the PS5, you’re out of luck unless you don’t mind spending $80 on a (currently out of stock on the PlayStation Direct store) or $30 for the . Also, $380 is only $20 less than the $400 the PS5 Digital Edition cost at launch in 2020.
Put together, this ***** is still less expensive than the PS5 Slim with a built-in disc drive. This version hasn’t been discounted for the holidays and still costs $500 — and the vertical stand is sold separately, a fact that seems to be quickly becoming a meme if the comments on the YouTube video above are any indication.
The PS5 Slim replaced the infamously chunky PS5 Sony released in 2020. It doesn’t change much about the launch console, but it’s thinner and has slightly more storage. There also aren’t any differences between the Digital Edition and regular edition besides the disc drive. If you have the money to spare this holiday and need the best frame rates possible, there’s also the PS5 Pro, which launched earlier this month for $700 (disc drive and vertical stand sold separately).
Source link
#PlayStation #discount #time #holidays
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Xiaomi AI Glasses Reportedly in Development With Goertek; to Compete With Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses
Xiaomi AI Glasses Reportedly in Development With Goertek; to Compete With Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses
Xiaomi is working on a pair of smart glasses that offer support for features backed by artificial intelligence (AI) in collaboration with Apple supplier Goertek, according to a report. Other firms like Meta, Snap, and Baidu have either launched or unveiled glasses equipped with cameras, and Xiaomi’s purported wearable is also expected to offer similar functionality. Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun reportedly expects the company to ship over 300,000 units of the product, which could be launched next year.
Xiaomi AI Glasses Launch Timeline (Expected)
According to an IT Home report (in ********), Xiaomi is developing a pair of AI glasses in partnership with Goertek. This device has reportedly been designed to offer AI features. It is said to have been in development for a few months, and the company could unveil it in China in Q2 2025, as a Xiaomi-branded wearable.
The purported AI glasses from Xiaomi will reportedly offer features found on similar devices, such as the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses (Review), which were recently updated with support for AI functionality. Xiaomi plans to equip the AI glasses with camera and audio modules, as per the report.
The publication claims that Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun expects the company to ship “above 300,000 units” of the AI glasses. It is currently unclear whether the device will be launched in markets outside China, including India. Xiaomi’s AI glasses are expected to compete with the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, which are yet to make their debut in India.
Earlier this week, Baidu unveiled the Xiaodu AI Glasses its first smart glasses equipped with a 16-megapixel camera and a four-microphone array. The ******** search giant’s wearable is designed to work with its native large language models (LLMs), and it can answer a user’s queries in real time, according to the company.
While Meta already sells a pair of smart glasses, the company recently showed off a prototype called Meta Orion, that is capable of displaying information on the glasses, providing a form of heads up display to a user. However, these AR glasses are unlikely to be launched until 2027, the company revealed while announcing the device.
Source link
#Xiaomi #Glasses #Reportedly #Development #Goertek #Compete #RayBan #Meta #Smart #Glasses
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
What has Marco Rubio said about China, Iran, ******* and Ukraine?
What has Marco Rubio said about China, Iran, ******* and Ukraine?
*********** presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) react during a campaign event at Dorton Arena, in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S. November 4, 2024.
Jonathan Drake | Reuters
President-Elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, arguably the world’s most important diplomat, could change the dial when it comes to the U.S.’ relationship with both its enemies and its allies.
Rubio, considered a foreign policy hawk, has been intensely critical of China and Iran, which are considered the U.S.’ top economic and geopolitical adversaries, but has also been ambivalent about ongoing support for Ukraine, echoing Trump’s stance that the war with Russia must come to an end.
Serving as the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio was officially tapped to be secretary of state by Trump late Wednesday as he appointed his top team for the White House following his decisive election win last week.
“He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social platform.
Rubio’s nomination, along with his assertive position on foreign policy matters and criticism of America’s rivals, could ease concerns among U.S. allies that the world’s most powerful economy retreat from the global stage, given Trump’s “America First” policy.
Ahead of his nomination, and after Trump’s election win, Rubio told CNN that the U.S. was entering “an era of pragmatic foreign policy.”
“The world is rapidly changing. You know, adversaries are uniting — in North Korea, Iran, China, Russia — [and] increasingly coordinating,” Rubio said. “It is going to require us to be very pragmatic and wise in how we invest overseas and what we do.”
The relationship between Trump and Rubio has not always been easy. Both men ran for president in 2016, bitterly clashing as they campaigned for the *********** nomination with Trump describing Rubio as “Little Marco,” and Rubio making fun of Trump’s “small hands.”
At that time, Rubio was critical of Trump’s isolationist foreign policy stance. Back in 2016 he said “the world without ********* engagement is a world none of us wants to live with,” arguing against Trump’s position that the U.S. gives more than it gets from its interactions with the international community.
US Senator Marco Rubio speaks during a campaign rally for former US President and *********** presidential candidate Donald Trump in Doral, Florida, on July 9, 2024.
Giorgio Viera | AFP | Getty Images
Rubio has since made peace with the president-elect, however, backing him in his presidential campaign.
Rubio’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to his new role, but here’s a snapshot of the 53-year-old politician’s comments on some of the U.S.’ biggest foreign policy challenges, signaling what we might expect from the incoming secretary of state:
China
JIUJIANG, CHINA – JUNE 17: A worker manufactures seamless steel gas cylinders for export at the workshop of Sinoma Science & Technology (Jiujiang) Co., Ltd. on June 17, 2024 in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province of China.
Wei Dongsheng | Visual China Group | Getty Images
“This report should serve as a wakeup call to lawmakers, CEOs, and investors,” Rubio said, calling for “a whole-of-society effort to rebuild our country, overcome the China challenge, and keep the torch of freedom lit for generations to come.”
There’s no love lost for Rubio in Beijing. In 2020, Rubio and other top U.S. officials were sanctioned by China during a round of ****-for-tat sanctions by Beijing and Washington.
Iran and *******
It’s uncertain how a Trump administration, and future Secretary of State Rubio, will approach Iran with both Republicans giving off mixed signals when it comes to a punitive or more pragmatic policy stance.
Trump caused international consternation in his first term in office by ripping up the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and re-imposing biting sanctions on Iran, with critics warning that Iran’s nuclear weapons capability would be achieved sooner rather than later, as a result.
Ahead of his election win last week, Trump signaled he was open to reaching a new nuclear agreement with Iran, however, telling reporters in New York, “sure, I would do that.” “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal,” he said, in comments reported by Politico.
U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order imposing new sanctions on Iran, in the Oval Office at the White House on June 24, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Mark Wilson | Getty Images
For its part, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tuesday that the country “will have to deal with the U.S. in the regional and international arena,” Reuters reported, signaling Iran could also be open to talks.
A new nuclear deal might not go down well in *******, however, a country Trump cast himself as a “protector” of during his election campaign. Rubio too has been a vocal critic of Iran and a staunch supporter of ******* as it continues its attacks on Iranian proxies, the militant groups ****** and Hezbollah, in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively.
In late September, Rubio gave his backing to the ******** airstrike that ******* Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, telling NBC News that “******* has no choice but to defend itself. Wiping out not just Nasrallah, but the senior leadership of this evil organization, I think, is a service to humanity.” He also said Iran’s goal in the Middle East was to “seek to drive America out of the region and then ******** *******.”
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, *********** of Florida, greets former U.S. President and *********** presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally at the PPL Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 2024.
Angela Weiss | Afp | Getty Images
Rubio has not ruled out taking a pragmatic approach to Tehran either, telling NBC News that “if the Iranian regime tomorrow said, ‘We’re going to stop trying to become the regional power, we’re going to stop our nuclear weapons, we’re going to stop sponsoring terrorism, we’re going to stop trying to ***** you —which is what they’re trying to do with Donald Trump — we’re going to stop all of these things,’ theoretically, yes. Of course, you could work something like that out.”
Still, he added that the scenario was “unlikely because that’s the very driving mission and purpose of the regime.” Iran has denied U.S. charges that Tehran was linked to an alleged plot to ***** Trump.
Ukraine
It’s widely agreed that the incoming Trump administration will be far more hostile toward granting Ukraine more military aid, significantly inhibiting its ability to continue to ****** back against Russia. It’s also seen as likely that a *********** administration will push Kyiv into peace talks with Russia in which it will be forced to concede occupied land to its neighbor as part of a peace deal.
Rubio has insisted he is “not on Russia’s side” but he told NBC News in late September that “unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement.”
“We hope that when that time comes, there is more leverage on the Ukrainian side than on the Russian side. That really is the goal here, in my mind. And I think that’s what [former President] Donald Trump is trying to say,” Rubio said.
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks on Day 2 of the *********** National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 16, 2024.
Mike Segar | Reuters
The senator was initially a vocal supporter of Ukraine but his, and other Republicans’ backing has waned as the funding bill has racked up after 32 months of war, and as domestic issues remain unresolved.
Rubio was among a small group of hardline Republicans that voted in April against a $95 billion aid package to help Ukraine, Taiwan and *******, saying he opposed the bill because the U.S. was not doing enough to tackle its own domestic challenges, such as border security and immigration.
Source link
#Marco #Rubio #China #Iran #******* #Ukraine
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
What has Marco Rubio said about China, Iran, ******* and Ukraine?
What has Marco Rubio said about China, Iran, ******* and Ukraine?
*********** presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) react during a campaign event at Dorton Arena, in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S. November 4, 2024.
Jonathan Drake | Reuters
President-Elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, arguably the world’s most important diplomat, could change the dial when it comes to the U.S.’ relationship with both its enemies and its allies.
Rubio, considered a foreign policy hawk, has been intensely critical of China and Iran, which are considered the U.S.’ top economic and geopolitical adversaries, but has also been ambivalent about ongoing support for Ukraine, echoing Trump’s stance that the war with Russia must come to an end.
Serving as the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio was officially tapped to be secretary of state by Trump late Wednesday as he appointed his top team for the White House following his decisive election win last week.
“He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social platform.
Rubio’s nomination, along with his assertive position on foreign policy matters and criticism of America’s rivals, could ease concerns among U.S. allies that the world’s most powerful economy retreat from the global stage, given Trump’s “America First” policy.
Ahead of his nomination, and after Trump’s election win, Rubio told CNN that the U.S. was entering “an era of pragmatic foreign policy.”
“The world is rapidly changing. You know, adversaries are uniting — in North Korea, Iran, China, Russia — [and] increasingly coordinating,” Rubio said. “It is going to require us to be very pragmatic and wise in how we invest overseas and what we do.”
The relationship between Trump and Rubio has not always been easy. Both men ran for president in 2016, bitterly clashing as they campaigned for the *********** nomination with Trump describing Rubio as “Little Marco,” and Rubio making fun of Trump’s “small hands.”
At that time, Rubio was critical of Trump’s isolationist foreign policy stance. Back in 2016 he said “the world without ********* engagement is a world none of us wants to live with,” arguing against Trump’s position that the U.S. gives more than it gets from its interactions with the international community.
US Senator Marco Rubio speaks during a campaign rally for former US President and *********** presidential candidate Donald Trump in Doral, Florida, on July 9, 2024.
Giorgio Viera | AFP | Getty Images
Rubio has since made peace with the president-elect, however, backing him in his presidential campaign.
Rubio’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to his new role, but here’s a snapshot of the 53-year-old politician’s comments on some of the U.S.’ biggest foreign policy challenges, signaling what we might expect from the incoming secretary of state:
China
JIUJIANG, CHINA – JUNE 17: A worker manufactures seamless steel gas cylinders for export at the workshop of Sinoma Science & Technology (Jiujiang) Co., Ltd. on June 17, 2024 in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province of China.
Wei Dongsheng | Visual China Group | Getty Images
“This report should serve as a wakeup call to lawmakers, CEOs, and investors,” Rubio said, calling for “a whole-of-society effort to rebuild our country, overcome the China challenge, and keep the torch of freedom lit for generations to come.”
There’s no love lost for Rubio in Beijing. In 2020, Rubio and other top U.S. officials were sanctioned by China during a round of ****-for-tat sanctions by Beijing and Washington. Rubio is also banned from entering China.
Iran and *******
It’s uncertain how a Trump administration, and future Secretary of State Rubio, will approach Iran with both Republicans giving off mixed signals when it comes to a punitive or more pragmatic policy stance.
Trump caused international consternation in his first term in office by ripping up the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and re-imposing biting sanctions on Iran, with critics warning that Iran’s nuclear weapons capability would be achieved sooner rather than later, as a result.
Ahead of his election win last week, Trump signaled he was open to reaching a new nuclear agreement with Iran, however, telling reporters in New York, “sure, I would do that.” “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal,” he said, in comments reported by Politico.
U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order imposing new sanctions on Iran, in the Oval Office at the White House on June 24, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Mark Wilson | Getty Images
For its part, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tuesday that the country “will have to deal with the U.S. in the regional and international arena,” Reuters reported, signaling Iran could also be open to talks.
A new nuclear deal might not go down well in *******, however, a country Trump cast himself as a “protector” of during his election campaign. Rubio too has been a vocal critic of Iran and a staunch supporter of ******* as it continues its attacks on Iranian proxies, the militant groups ****** and Hezbollah, in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively.
In late September, Rubio gave his backing to the ******** airstrike that ******* Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, telling NBC News that “******* has no choice but to defend itself. Wiping out not just Nasrallah, but the senior leadership of this evil organization, I think, is a service to humanity.” He also said Iran’s goal in the Middle East was to “seek to drive America out of the region and then ******** *******.”
Rubio has not ruled out taking a pragmatic approach to Tehran either, telling NBC News that “if the Iranian regime tomorrow said, ‘We’re going to stop trying to become the regional power, we’re going to stop our nuclear weapons, we’re going to stop sponsoring terrorism, we’re going to stop trying to ***** you —which is what they’re trying to do with Donald Trump — we’re going to stop all of these things,’ theoretically, yes. Of course, you could work something like that out.”
Still, he added that the scenario was “unlikely because that’s the very driving mission and purpose of the regime.” Iran has denied U.S. charges that Tehran was linked to an alleged plot to ***** Trump.
Ukraine
It’s widely agreed that the incoming Trump administration will be far more hostile toward granting Ukraine more military aid, significantly inhibiting its ability to continue to ****** back against Russia. It’s also seen as likely that a *********** administration will push Kyiv into peace talks with Russia in which it will be forced to concede occupied land to its neighbor as part of a peace deal.
Rubio has insisted he is “not on Russia’s side” but he told NBC News in late September that “unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement.”
“We hope that when that time comes, there is more leverage on the Ukrainian side than on the Russian side. That really is the goal here, in my mind. And I think that’s what [former President] Donald Trump is trying to say,” Rubio said.
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks on Day 2 of the *********** National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 16, 2024.
Mike Segar | Reuters
The senator was initially a vocal supporter of Ukraine but his, and other Republicans’ backing has waned as the funding bill has racked up after 32 months of war, and as domestic issues remain unresolved.
Rubio was among a small group of hardline Republicans that voted in April against a $95 billion aid package to help Ukraine, Taiwan and *******, saying he opposed the bill because the U.S. was not doing enough to tackle its own domestic challenges, such as border security and immigration.
Source link
#Marco #Rubio #China #Iran #******* #Ukraine
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Review – A Legend Renewed | GB
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Review – A Legend Renewed | GB
“It’s been a long time coming, and we’re happy to report that Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake largely lives up to expectations. Disappointing performance issues aside, this is a faithful adaptation of a treasured RPG classic that elevates its strongest aspects while doing its best to make up for any shortcomings. ” – Mitch Vogel | NintendoLife
Source link
#Dragon #Quest #HD2D #Remake #Review #Legend #Renewed
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
*** car finance industry in crisis, with banks bracing for mega payouts
*** car finance industry in crisis, with banks bracing for mega payouts
View looking towards the Royal Exchange and in the City of London where the glass architecture of the tower 22 Bishopsgate disappears into mist on 6th November 2024 in London, ******* Kingdom.
Mike Kemp | In Pictures | Getty Images
Britain’s motor finance industry is in disarray, with analysts warning of worst-case scenarios similar in magnitude to the country’s costliest consumer banking scandal.
The burgeoning crisis stems back to a landmark judgement from the U.K.’s Court of Appeal in late October, when the court ruled it was unlawful for car dealers to receive bonuses from banks providing motor finance — without getting the customer’s informed consent.
The decision caught many in the motor finance industry off guard and appears to have paved the way for a multi-billion-pound redress scheme to compensate consumers.
It has prompted comparisons to Britain’s payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal, which was estimated to have cost banks more than £50 billion ($63.8 billion) and is regarded as the biggest mis-selling scandal in the country’s financial services history.
Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority, the country’s financial watchdog, said on Wednesday that it will write to the Supreme Court to expedite a decision over whether to give lenders the green light to appeal the ruling.
Banks left ‘in limbo’
The FCA, which noted that car financing groups were likely to have received a surge in complaints in recent weeks, said that it would consider intervening “to share its expertise” if permission to appeal is granted.
It urged motor finance groups to consider setting aside financial provisions to resolve the high volume of complaints.
Niklas Kammer, equity analyst at Morningstar, said Britain’s banks have been left in “in limbo” since the Oct. 25 court ruling, with Lloyds thought to be the most at risk through its ****** Horse business. Barclays also has some exposure, Kammer said, “but meaningfully less.”
A Lloyds Banking Group Plc bank branch in London, ***, on Monday, Oct. 21, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“I think it is fair to say that the ruling by the Court of Appeal came as a surprise to the banks as well as the FCA. According to the banks, they followed the rules and guidelines set by the FCA, which are not aligned with the new Court of Appeal ruling,” Kammer told CNBC via email.
“As such, there exists significant uncertainty which set of rules banks have to abide by. The FCA has said that it will await the outcome of a potential Supreme Court ruling before taking a decision on the matter,” Kammer said.
“If the ruling stands, the FCA will have to change its rules on disclosures. Initially, the FCA pointed out that the matter should not take similar proportions to the PPI mis-selling, but should the new ruling stand, worst case scenarios do come close to the same magnitude in impact.”
Lenders ‘likely to pull out of the market’
Benjamin Toms, U.K. banks analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said that if the Supreme Court upholds the lower courts verdict, the downside impact for the motor finance sector, which includes both banks and non-banks, could be as much as £28 billion.
“Some lenders are likely to pull out of the market, which will mean less choice and higher prices for those looking to buy a vehicle,” Toms said.
“There is also the potential for legal creep, with other types of lending like premium finance also coming under the spotlight,” he added.
London Taxis wait in a ****** at a taxi rank outside Fenchurch Street Station on October 14, 2024 in London, ******* Kingdom.
John Keeble | Getty Images News | Getty Images
In January, the FCA launched a review into the motor finance industry to probe whether there was widespread misconduct related to discretionary commission arrangements, or DCAs, before they were banned in 2021.
It said on Wednesday that it is currently considering the impact of the Court of Appeal’s judgement on its review.
Fitch, an influential rating agency, warned earlier this month that it had placed the ratings of Close Brothers Group on “Rating Watch Negative” due to the lender’s “high exposure” to motor finance.
Other lenders that have been “significantly involved” in motor finance lending include Barclays, Investec, Lloyds and Santander ***, Fitch said.
Lloyds, Britain’s largest car finance business, has set aside £450 million in financial provisions.
Source link
#car #finance #industry #crisis #banks #bracing #mega #payouts
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Fortnite OG is bringing back the shooter’s original map for good
Fortnite OG is bringing back the shooter’s original map for good
Epic Games
Fortnite OG, a limited-time mode that brought back the original island from all the way back in Season 1, is coming back to the game — for good this time.
Epic Games announced in a post on X that Fortnite OG is “combing BACK and is here to stay” starting December 6. That means players can experience the original map and loot starting with Chapter 1, Season 1 from all the way back in 2017, when Fortnite was less of the pop culture metaverse juggernaut it is today.
THIS. IS. NOT. A. DRILL.
OG is coming BACK and is here to stay. Relive Battle Royale from the start and explore the OG map, collect OG loot, and relive OG seasons. Drop back in on December 6. pic.twitter.com/Zpg1CrItS5
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) November 12, 2024
Epic Games hasn’t released any other details just yet, but if it’s anything like the original Fortnite OG event (the OG OG event, if you will) from November 2023, it’ll go so far as to introduce weapons and vehicles back into the game. It began with Chapter 1, Season 5, which brought in features like shopping carts, weapons like the boogie *****, and, eventually, airplanes. It then brought in other seasons through updates.
The event only lasted for around a month, but Epic Games later announced that it was looking into bringing it back in 2024 because it “far exceeded our expectations.” Epic reported that the battle royale had the “biggest day” in its history thanks to Fortnite OG, bringing in over 44.7 million players.
Fortnite has been leaning into nostalgia with its latest battle pass for Chapter 2 Remix that brings back classic characters (at least from 2019 and 2020), cosmetics, gameplay, and returning unvaulted items. This is part of an event where music artists like Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Spice, and Juice WRLD “remix” the classic map with different locations, such as a restaurant called Mom’s Spaghetti.
Source link
#Fortnite #bringing #shooters #original #map #good
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Tech firms invest in sovereign AI to cut Europe dependence on US tech
Tech firms invest in sovereign AI to cut Europe dependence on US tech
LISBON, Portugal — Tech giants are increasingly investing in the development of so-called “sovereign” artificial intelligence models as they seek to boost competitiveness by focusing more on local infrastructure.
Data sovereignty refers to the idea that people’s data should be stored on infrastructure within the country or continent they reside in.
“Sovereign AI is a relatively new term that’s emerged in the last year or so,” Chris Gow, IT networking giant Cisco’s Brussels-based EU public policy lead, told CNBC.
Currently, many of the biggest large language models (LLMs), like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, use data centers based in the U.S. to store data and process requests via the cloud.
This has led to concern from politicians and regulators in Europe, who see dependence on U.S. technology as harmful to the continent’s competitiveness — and, more worryingly, technological resilience.
Where did ‘AI sovereignty’ come from?
The notion of data and technological sovereignty is something that has previously been on Europe’s agenda. It came about, in part, as a result of businesses reacting to new regulations.
The ********* Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, for example, requires companies to handle user data in a secure, compliant way that respects their right to privacy. High-profile cases in the EU have also raised doubts over whether data on ********* citizens can be transferred across borders safely.
The ********* Court of Justice in 2020 invalidated an EU-U.S. data-sharing framework, on the grounds that the pact did not afford the same level of protection as guaranteed within the EU by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Last year the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework was formed to ensure that data can flow safely between the EU and U.S.
These political development have ultimately resulted in a push toward localization of cloud infrastructure, where data is stored and processed for many online services.
Filippo Sanesi, global head of marketing and operations at OVHCloud, said the French cloud firm is seeing lots of demand for its *********-located infrastructure, as they “understand the value of having their data in Europe, which are subject to ********* legislation.”
“As this concept of data sovereignty becomes more mature and people understand what it means, we see more and more companies understanding the importance of having your data locally and under a specific jurisdiction and governance,” Sanesi told CNBC. “We have a lot of data,” he added. “This data is sovereign in specific countries, under specific regulations.”
“Now, with this data, you can actually make products and services for AI, and those services should then be sovereign, should be controlled, deployed and developed locally by local talent for the local population or businesses.”
The AI sovereignty push hasn’t been driven forward by regulators — at least, not yet, according to Cisco’s Gow. Rather, it’s come from private companies, which are opening more data centers — facilities containing vast amounts of computing equipment to enable cloud-based AI tools — in Europe, he said.
Sovereign AI is “more driven by the industry naming it that, than it is from the policymakers’ side,” Gow said. “You don’t see the ‘AI sovereignty’ terminology used on the regulator side yet.”
Countries are pushing the idea of AI sovereignty because they recognize AI is “the future” and a “massively strategic technology,” Gow said.
Governments are focusing on boosting their domestic tech companies and ecosystems, as well as the all-important backend infrastructure that enables AI services.
“The AI workload uses 20 times the bandwidth of a traditional workload,” Gow said. It’s also about enabling the workforce, according to Gow, as firms need skilled workers to be successful.
Most important of all, however, is the data. “What you’re seeing is quite a few attempts from that side to think about training LLMs on localized data, in language,” Gow said.
‘Reflecting values’
In Italy, the first LLM trained specifically on the Italian language data, called Italia 9B, launched this summer.
The aim of the Italia project is to store results in a given jurisdiction and rely on data from citizens within that region so that results produced by the AI systems there are more grounded in local languages, culture and history.
“Sovereign AI is about reflecting the values of an organization or, equally, the country that you’re in and the values and the language,” David Hogan, EMEA head of enterprise sales for chipmaking giant Nvidia, told CNBC.
“The core challenge is that most of the frontier models today have been trained primarily on Western data generally,” Hogan added.
In Denmark for example, where Nvidia has a major presence, officials are concerned about vital services such as health care and telecoms being delivered by AI systems that aren’t “reflective” of local Danish culture and values, according to Hogan.
On Wednesday, Denmark ***** out a landmark white paper outlining how companies can use AI in compliance with the incoming EU AI Act — the world’s first major AI law. The document is meant to serve as a blueprint for other EU nations to follow and adopt.
“If you’re in a ********* country that’s not one of the major language countries that’s spoken internationally, probably less than 2% of the data is trained on your language — let alone your culture,” Hogan said.
How regulation fueled a mindset shift
That’s not to say regulations haven’t proven an important factor in getting tech giants to think more about building localized AI infrastructure within Europe.
OVHCloud’s Sanesi said regulations like the EU’s GDPR catalyzed a lot of the interest in onshoring the processing of data in a given region.
The concept of AI sovereignty is also getting buy-in from local ********* tech firms.
Earlier this week, Berlin-headquartered search engine Ecosia and its Paris-based peer Qwant announced a ****** venture to develop a ********* search index from scratch, aiming to serve improved French and ******* language results.
Meanwhile, French telecom operator Orange has said it’s in discussions with a number of foundational AI model companies about building a smartphone-based “sovereign AI” model for its customers that more accurately reflects their own language and culture.
“It wouldn’t make sense to build our own LLMs. So there’s a lot of discussion right now about, how do we partner with existing providers to make it more local and safer?” Bruno Zerbib, Orange’s chief technology officer, told CNBC.
“There are a lot of use cases where [AI data] can be processed locally [on a phone] instead of processed on the cloud,” Zerbib added. Orange hasn’t yet selected a partner for these sovereign AI model ambitions.
Source link
#Tech #firms #invest #sovereign #cut #Europe #dependence #tech
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Hydrow just announced a new smart rowing machine, with no subscription required
Hydrow just announced a new smart rowing machine, with no subscription required
Hydrow, a company that makes smart rowing machines, just announced the Core, a new model that eschews monthly subscription fees. The Hydrow Core Rower features the “same award-winning design” as the original Pro Rower, which we said was positioning itself to be “the Peloton of smart rowing machines.”
Obviously, the ***** here is that the Core is a one-and-done purchase with no recurring subscription costs. It still comes with an attached display, which lets users “row through stunning destinations.” All told, this machine offers access to 30 self-paced rows through these exotic locales.
Hydrow
The Core Rower supports unlimited users, which is nice, but there is one major caveat. There’s no subscription, so there’s no access to instructor-led workouts, badges, milestones and other premium features. However, customers can add a membership later for all of that stuff. Hydrow charges $44 per month for a subscription. It could be useful to try it out for a month to see if all of those additional bells and whistles are worth it.
The Hydrow Core Rower is available right now and costs $1,995. This is the exact same price as the flagship Pro Rower. The company also recently released a trimmed down version called the Hydrow Wave. This one is smaller and cheaper, clocking in at around $1,700.
Source link
#Hydrow #announced #smart #rowing #machine #subscription #required
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
How ghost hunters turned weather meters into spectre detectors | Meteorology
How ghost hunters turned weather meters into spectre detectors | Meteorology
Ghost hunting has become a television sensation, with help from an unexpected accessory: the portable weather meter.
Years ago, weather stations were static installations, but these days all the necessary instrumentation can be packed into an electronic device no larger than a smartphone, providing a handy scientific device for meteorologists – and for spirit seekers.
Paranormal investigators associate cold spots or sudden drops in temperature with the presence of ghosts, and have long used wind chimes to detect drafts supposedly generated by spirits. Modern ghost hunters use devices such as the handheld Kestrel 3500NV, which measures temperature, pressure, relative humidity and wind speed. There is even a backlight for night-time use.
Tea Krulos, the author of a book called Monster Hunters, lists a portable weather meter as standard gear for paranormal investigators. Unlike dowsing rods or other traditional tools, these sensors provide objective, numerical evidence of what is happening at a supposedly haunted spot, rather than a vague, subjective sensation.
Cynics may say that toting a scientific gadget allows the investigator to give their claims a gloss of scientific credibility, while their audience may be inclined to consider the device in their hands as a spectre detector rather than a mere weather meter.
Source link
#ghost #hunters #turned #weather #meters #spectre #detectors #Meteorology
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Trump’s choice for attorney general shocks Washington
Trump’s choice for attorney general shocks Washington
Donald Trump’s nomination of Congressman Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general arrived like a thunder-clap in Washington DC on Wednesday afternoon.
Of all the president-elect’s picks for his administration so far, this is easily the most controversial – and sends a clear message that Trump intends to shake up the establishment when he returns to power.
The firebrand Florida politician is perhaps best known for spearheading the effort to unseat then-*********** Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy last year. But he has a consistent history of being a flamethrower in the staid halls of Congress.
In 2018, he brought a right-wing Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, and later tried to expel two fathers who lost children in a mass ********* from a hearing after they objected to a claim he made about **** control.
His bombastic approach means he has no shortage of enemies, including within his own party. And so Trump’s choice of Gaetz for this crucial role is a signal to those Republicans, too – his second administration will be staffed by loyalists who he trusts to enact his agenda, conventional political opinion be damned.
Gasps were heard during a meeting of *********** lawmakers when the nomination for America’s top US prosecutor was announced, Axios reported, citing sources in the room.
*********** Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho reportedly responded with an expletive.
“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Alaska *********** Senator Lisa Murkowski said. “This one was not on my Bingo card.”
Gaetz does have some allies on Capitol Hill who share an unwavering loyalty to Trump. The Florida lawmaker has been one of the president-elect’s most aggressive and relentless defenders – at congressional hearings, in press conferences and during television appearances.
On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, another devoted Trump loyalist, called Gaetz an “accomplished attorney”.
“He’s a reformer in his mind and heart, and I think that he’ll bring a lot to the table on that,” said Johnson.
In a social media post, Trump spelled out how he intends to use Gaetz as a wrecking ball to radically change the US Department of Justice, which he has regularly blamed for his multiple legal troubles.
“Matt will root out the systemic *********** at the DOJ, and return the department to its true mission of fighting ****** and upholding our democracy and constitution,” he wrote.
During the campaign, Trump promised retribution for the numerous investigations launched against him. Now, it appears, Gaetz will be at the frontlines of Trump’s efforts to bring the justice department to heel.
The department also investigated Gaetz himself.
Last year, it declined to bring charges over allegations he violated **** trafficking laws during a trip he took to the Bahamas with paid escorts. He was the subject of an ongoing ethics investigation in the House of Representatives into allegations of ******* misconduct, illicit ***** use and misuse of campaign funds.
But on Wednesday evening, Johnson said Gaetz had resigned as a lawmaker, effectively ending the House probe since the committee only investigates members.
Gaetz has denied all the allegations against him.
According to CBS News, Gaetz had asked Trump for a pre-emptive pardon for any related ******* prior to the president leaving office in January 2021.
All this makes him an unlikely choice for a position that typically goes to more senior politicians, well versed in law.
Gaetz, 42, has a law degree and worked for a Florida law firm before his eight years in Congress. Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, was a senior federal appellate court judge. Trump in his first term picked US Senator Jeff Sessions, and later Bill Barr, who had decades of experience in *********** presidential administrations.
The Senate will be responsible for confirming Gaetz’s nomination, and the Florida congressman has ruffled more then a few feathers in that chamber – including among Republicans. While his party has a majority, it would only take four “no” votes, joined by unified Democratic opposition, to sink his chances.
Gaetz himself said last year that he would love to be attorney general while acknowledging it was unlikely.
“The world is not ready, probably,” he told Newsmax in an interview. “Certainly Senate confirmation wouldn’t be, but you know, a boy can dream.”
For the moment, however, Trump’s closest supporters are celebrating his pick.
“The hammer of justice is coming,” Elon Musk posted about Gaetz on X.
Regardless of the ultimate outcome of Gaetz’s bid to be attorney general, Trump has fired a warning shot across the bow of US government. While his second term in office may be more organised than his first, it may end up being even more confrontational.
Source link
#Trumps #choice #attorney #general #shocks #Washington
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Why Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Hair Looks So ***** Good
Why Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Hair Looks So ***** Good
Dragon Age: The Veilguard has introduced some striking visual changes to the world of Thedas, and while the new art style has been met with mixed reception, there’s one aspect of the game’s aesthetic that most players seem to agree on: The hair looks really, really good.
EA and BioWare appear to share the sentiment, and have revealed the recipe for high-quality hair animations via a new blog post that examines every individual strand of The Veilguard’s glorious collective locks. According to the post, each of the game’s hairstyles–of which there are over 100–contain 50,000 individually rendered strands of hair. EA and BioWare credit the Frostbite engine for the high-quality results.
You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.
The Good and The Bad of Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Size:640 × 360480 × 270
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Sign up or Sign in now!
Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.
This video has an invalid file format.
Sorry, but you can’t access this content!
Please enter your date of birth to view this video
JanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031Year20242023202220212020201920182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005200420032002200120001999199819971996199519941993199219911990198919881987198619851984198319821981198019791978197719761975197419731972197119701969196819671966196519641963196219611960195919581957195619551954195319521951195019491948194719461945194419431942194119401939193819371936193519341933193219311930192919281927192619251924192319221921192019191918191719161915191419131912191119101909190819071906190519041903190219011900
By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
enter
Frostbite has been working on realistic hair tech for a while now, but the engine’s progress truly shines in Veilguard, and it’s not simply due to the number of hairstyle options or the amount of hairs on each character’s head–length plays a major role, too. The Veilguard features a number of waist-length hair options (curly or straight) that move in combat, realistically responding to momentum, wind, blasts of magic, changes in direction, and other variables. But getting there wasn’t easy.
“With hair attachments that move seamlessly and the decoupling of simulation and render tessellation, this is the first EA game to offer such detailed, physics-driven long hairstyles,” the blog post explains. “The Frostbite team increased maximum hair length from 63 points to 255, and implemented a new system for complex hair structures like braids.”
One of Veilguard’s longest hairstyle options sees Rook’s hair hovering just above their hips.
Changes to the Frostbite engine’s lighting also played a major role in mastering Veilguard’s hair physics, but it wasn’t all fun and games–BioWare faced various challenges while working to perfect the way hair moved in-game. The main culprit? Horns.
“While Strand Hair is present in other EA games, the BioWare team had to push the limits even further for Dragon Age: The Veilguard,” the post continues. “For example, implementing Strand Hair technology for characters who have waist-length hair with horns on their head presented some unique challenges.”
Veilguard’s beautifully rendered hair options haven’t been overlooked by players, many of whom are very pleased with the game’s well-animated cosmetic offerings and spent hours perfecting their Rook in the game’s character creator. In a medium where “long hair” often translates to “shoulder-length at best,” Dragon Age: The Veilguard seems to represent the industry’s first major step in finally perfecting the art of realistic, complex hair structures in games. That’s good news for everyone, especially Mass Effect fans, who will likely have access to similarly realistic hair options when the next entry in the franchise finally arrives.
For more info on BioWare’s latest fantasy RPG, check out GameSpot’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard review-in-progress.
Source link
#Dragon #Age #Veilguards #Hair #***** #Good
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Tech firms invest in sovereign AI to cut Europe dependence on US tech
Tech firms invest in sovereign AI to cut Europe dependence on US tech
LISBON, Portugal — Tech giants are increasingly investing in the development of so-called “sovereign” artificial intelligence models as they seek to boost competitiveness by focusing more on local infrastructure.
Data sovereignty refers to the idea that people’s data should be stored on infrastructure within the country or continent they reside in.
“Sovereign AI is a relatively new term that’s emerged in the last year or so,” Chris Gow, IT networking giant Cisco’s Brussels-based EU public policy lead, told CNBC.
Currently, many of the biggest large language models (LLMs), like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, use data centers based in the U.S. to store data and process requests via the cloud.
This has led to concern from politicians and regulators in Europe, who see dependence on U.S. technology as harmful to the continent’s competitiveness — and, more worryingly, technological resilience.
Where did ‘AI sovereignty’ come from?
The notion of data and technological sovereignty is something that has previously been on Europe’s agenda. It came about, in part, as a result of businesses reacting to new regulations.
The ********* Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, for example, requires companies to handle user data in a secure, compliant way that respects their right to privacy. High-profile cases in the EU have also raised doubts over whether data on ********* citizens can be transferred across borders safely.
The ********* Court of Justice in 2020 invalidated an EU-U.S. data-sharing framework, on the grounds that the pact did not afford the same level of protection as guaranteed within the EU by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Last year the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework was formed to ensure that data can flow safely between the EU and U.S.
These political development have ultimately resulted in a push toward localization of cloud infrastructure, where data is stored and processed for many online services.
Filippo Sanesi, global head of marketing and operations at OVHCloud, said the French cloud firm is seeing lots of demand for its *********-located infrastructure, as they “understand the value of having their data in Europe, which are subject to ********* legislation.”
“As this concept of data sovereignty becomes more mature and people understand what it means, we see more and more companies understanding the importance of having your data locally and under a specific jurisdiction and governance,” Sanesi told CNBC. “We have a lot of data,” he added. “This data is sovereign in specific countries, under specific regulations.”
“Now, with this data, you can actually make products and services for AI, and those services should then be sovereign, should be controlled, deployed and developed locally by local talent for the local population or businesses.”
The AI sovereignty push hasn’t been driven forward by regulators — at least, not yet, according to Cisco’s Gow. Rather, it’s come from private companies, which are opening more data centers — facilities containing vast amounts of computing equipment to enable cloud-based AI tools — in Europe, he said.
Sovereign AI is “more driven by the industry naming it that, than it is from the policymakers’ side,” Gow said. “You don’t see the ‘AI sovereignty’ terminology used on the regulator side yet.”
Countries are pushing the idea of AI sovereignty because they recognize AI is “the future” and a “massively strategic technology,” Gow said.
Governments are focusing on boosting their domestic tech companies and ecosystems, as well as the all-important backend infrastructure that enables AI services.
“The AI workload uses 20 times the bandwidth of a traditional workload,” Gow said. It’s also about enabling the workforce, according to Gow, as firms need skilled workers to be successful.
Most important of all, however, is the data. “What you’re seeing is quite a few attempts from that side to think about training LLMs on localized data, in language,” Gow said.
‘Reflecting values’
In Italy, the first LLM trained specifically on the Italian language data, called Italia 9B, launched this summer.
The aim of the Italia project is to store results in a given jurisdiction and rely on data from citizens within that region so that results produced by the AI systems there are more grounded in local languages, culture and history.
“Sovereign AI is about reflecting the values of an organization or, equally, the country that you’re in and the values and the language,” David Hogan, EMEA head of enterprise sales for chipmaking giant Nvidia, told CNBC.
“The core challenge is that most of the frontier models today have been trained primarily on Western data generally,” Hogan added.
In Denmark for example, where Nvidia has a major presence, officials are concerned about vital services such as health care and telecoms being delivered by AI systems that aren’t “reflective” of local Danish culture and values, according to Hogan.
On Wednesday, Denmark ***** out a landmark white paper outlining how companies can use AI in compliance with the incoming EU AI Act — the world’s first major AI law. The document is meant to serve as a blueprint for other EU nations to follow and adopt.
“If you’re in a ********* country that’s not one of the major language countries that’s spoken internationally, probably less than 2% of the data is trained on your language — let alone your culture,” Hogan said.
How regulation fueled a mindset shift
That’s not to say regulations haven’t proven an important factor in getting tech giants to think more about building localized AI infrastructure within Europe.
OVHCloud’s Sanesi said regulations like the EU’s GDPR catalyzed a lot of the interest in onshoring the processing of data in a given region.
The concept of AI sovereignty is also getting buy-in from local ********* tech firms.
Earlier this week, Berlin-headquartered search engine Ecosia and its Paris-based peer Qwant announced a ****** venture to develop a ********* search index from scratch, aiming to serve improved French and ******* language results.
Meanwhile, French telecom operator Orange has said it’s in discussions with a number of foundational AI model companies about building a smartphone-based “sovereign AI” model for its customers that more accurately reflects their own language and culture.
“It wouldn’t make sense to build our own LLMs. So there’s a lot of discussion right now about, how do we partner with existing providers to make it more local and safer?” Bruno Zerbib, Orange’s chief technology officer, told CNBC.
“There are a lot of use cases where [AI data] can be processed locally [on a phone] instead of processed on the cloud,” Zerbib added. Orange hasn’t yet selected a partner for these sovereign AI model ambitions.
Source link
#Tech #firms #invest #sovereign #cut #Europe #dependence #tech
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Families reunite with bodies of missing British soldiers
Families reunite with bodies of missing British soldiers
BBC
Michael Northey’s father was one of three soldiers ******* in the Korean War who was successfully identified
From his wheelchair, Michael Northey watches quietly over his father’s grave, and lays a flower for the very first time.
“This is the closest I’ve been to him in 70 years, which is ridiculous,” he jokes poignantly.
Born into a poor family in the backstreets of Portsmouth, Michael was still a baby when his father, the youngest of 13 children, left to ****** in the Korean War. He was ******* in action and his body was never identified.
For decades, it lay in an unmarked grave in the UN ********* in Busan, on Korea’s south coast, adorned with the plaque ‘Member of the British Army, known unto ****’.
Now it bears his name – Sergeant D. Northey, ***** 24 April 1951, age 23.
Sergeant Northey, along with three others, are the first unknown British soldiers ******* in the Korean War to be successfully identified, and Michael is attending a ceremony, along with the other families, to rename their graves.
Sergeant D. Northey, Corporal William Adair, and Major Patrick Angier were ******* fighting in the Korean War
Michael had spent years doing his own research, hoping to find out where his father was, but had eventually given up.
“I’m ill and don’t have a lot of time left myself, so I’d written it off, I thought I’d never find out,” he says.
But a couple of months ago, Michael received a phone call. Unknown to him, researchers at the Ministry of Defence had been conducting their own investigation. When he heard the news he says he “wailed like a banshee for 20 minutes”.
“I can’t describe the emotional release,” he says smiling. “This had haunted me for 70 years. The poor lady who phoned me, I felt sorry for her.”
The woman on the other end of the phone was Nicola Nash, a forensic researcher from the ****** Casualty and Compassionate Centre in Gloucester, who ordinarily works to identify victims from the First and Second World Wars.
Tasked for the first time with finding the Korean War *****, she had to start from scratch by first compiling a list of the 300 British soldiers still missing, of which 76 were ******* in the ********* in Busan.
Nicola went through their burial reports, and found just one man had been ******* wearing sergeant stripes from the Gloucester Regiment, as well as one major.
After trawling the national archives and cross referencing eye-witness accounts, family letters and war office reports, Ms Nash was able to identify these men as Sergeant Northey and Major Patrick Angier.
The men had been in unmarked graves but now have had their graves renamed
Both were ******* in the famous Battle of Imjin River in April 1951, as the ******** Army, which had joined the war on the North Korean side, tried push the allied forces down the peninsula to retake the capital Seoul. Despite being hugely outnumbered, the men held their position for three days, giving their comrades enough time to retreat and successfully defend the city.
The issue at the time, Ms Nash explains, is that because the battle was so *******, most of the men were either ******* or captured, leaving no one to identify them. The ****** had removed and scattered their dog tags. It was not until the prisoners of war were released that they could share their accounts, and no one had thought to go back and piece the puzzles together – until now.
For Ms Nash, this has been a six-year “labour of love”, made slightly easier, she admits, by having some of the men’s children still alive to draw on, something that has also made the process more special.
“The children have spent their whole lives not knowing what happened to their fathers, and for me to be able to do this work and bring them here to their graves, to say their goodbyes and have that closure, means everything”, she says.
Major Angier’s daughter Tabby had visited the ********* before without knowing her father was ******* there
At the ceremony, the families sit on chairs amidst the long rows of small stone graves, marking the thousands of foreign soldiers who fought and ***** in the Korean War. They are accompanied by serving soldiers from their loved ones’ old regiments.
Major Angier’s daughter Tabby, now 77, and his grandson Guy, stand to read excerpts of letters he wrote from the frontline. In one of his final addresses, he tells his wife: “Lots of love to our dear children. Do tell them how much Daddy misses them and will come back as soon as he has finished his work”.
Tabby was three when her father left for the war, and her memories of him are fractured. “I can remember someone standing in a room and canvas bags pilling up, which must have been his equipment to go to Korea, but I can’t see his face,” she says.
At the time of her father’s ******, people didn’t like to talk about wars, Tabby says. Instead, those in her small Gloucestershire village used to remark: “Oh, those poor children, they’ve lost their father.”
“I used to think that if he’s lost, they’re going to find him,” Tabby says.
But as the years passed and she learnt what had happened, Tabby was told her father’s body would never be found. The last recorded trace was that it had been left under an upturned boat on the battlefield.
Tabby has visited this ********* twice before, in an attempt to get as close to her father as she thought possible, not knowing he was here all along. “I think it will take some time to sink in,” she says, from his newly adorned graveside.
Cameron Adair’s great, great uncle Corporal William Adair is the third soldier to be indentified
The shock has been even greater for 25-year-old Cameron Adair from Scunthorpe, whose great, great uncle, Corporal William Adair, is one of two soldiers from the Royal Ulster Rifles Ms Nash has also managed to identify. The other is Rifleman Mark Foster from County Durham.
Both men were ******* in January 1951 as they were forced to retreat by a wave of ******** soldiers. Corporal Adair did not have children, and when his wife ***** so did his memory, leaving Cameron and his family unaware of his existence.
Finding out his relative “helped bring freedom to so many people” has brought Cameron “a real sense of pride,” he says. “Coming here and witnessing this first hand has really brought it home”.
Now a similar age to his uncle when he was *******, Cameron feels inspired and says he would like to serve if the need ever arose.
Ms Nash is now gathering DNA samples from the relatives of the other 300 missing soldiers, in the hope she can give more families the same peace and joy she has brought Cameron, Tabby and Michael.
“If there are still British personnel missing, we will keep trying to find them,” she says.
Source link
#Families #reunite #bodies #missing #British #soldiers
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Pokémon TCG Pocket: all secret missions and how to beat them
Pokémon TCG Pocket: all secret missions and how to beat them
Playing Pokémon TCG Pocket isn’t just about winning battles against your friends or building the best deck — there are a set of missions to beat in between all that. While Pokémon TCG Pocket has an array of normal missions for players to complete, there are a few secret missions that are hidden but discovered after completion.
Upon beating these missions, a good chunk of rewards is in store for you. These missions aren’t as simple as logging in or winning a battle — they’ll take you some time to complete, and without this guide to help you, you won’t know the requirements for it.
All requirements and rewards for secret missions in Pokémon TCG Pocket
Completing all of these secret missions in Pokémon TCG Pocket requires you to collect certain types of cards from one group. Currently, players have only seven secret missions, but with future game updates and new Booster Packs, there are bound to be more secret missions to complete.
Genetic Apex Museum 1 (Charizard)
Nintendo
There are three different Genetic Apex Museum secret missions, all of which are tied to getting the unique illustration cards. These eight cards have full artwork and are only available from the Charizard Booster Pack.
As a reward, players will receive 12 Pack Hourglasses, 36 Wonder Hourglasses, and 10 Shop Tickets.
Lapras
Meowth
Alakazam
Rapidash
Charmander
Gloom
Slowpoke
Pinsir
Genetic Apex Museum 2 (Mewtwo)
Nintendo
The second Genetic Apex Museum secret mission has you collect all eight full-artwork cards from the Mewtwo Booster Pack. Of course, this and all the other Genetic Apex Museum secret missions exclude their special ex Immersive Cards.
Your rewards for completing this mission are 12 Pack Hourglasses, 36 Wonder Hourglasses, and 10 Shop Tickets.
Bulbasaur
Ditto
Golbat
Cubone
Pidgeot
Dragonite
Weezing
Porygon
Genetic Apex Museum 3 (Pikachu)
Nintendo
As you probably guessed it, the final Genetic Apex Museum secret mission has you obtain all eight illustration cards from the Pikachu Booster Pack.
Just like the previous two missions, your rewards for this mission are 12 Pack Hourglasses, 36 Wonder Hourglasses, and 10 Shop Tickets.
Electrode
Nidoking
Nidoqueen
Eevee
Squirtle
Diglett
Gyarados
Snorlax
Complete the Kanto Pokédex!
You’ll have to collect one card from every Pokémon in the Kanto region. This is the toughest secret mission yet, as you’ll need a whopping 150 cards. It’s not 151 since you get Mew as a reward for completing this secret mission, and it’s not available in any other pack. The easiest way to track this mission is by checking if you have all of the first 150 Pokémon from Gen 1.
The Immersive 4
Nintendo
You can complete The Immersive 4 secret mission by collecting all four of the three-star Immersive Cards, which have their own animations. The special Mew card is a reward you get for completing a separate secret mission.
For completing this difficult secret mission, you’ll earn 12 Pack Hourglasses, 48 Wonder Hourglasses, and 20 Shop Tickets.
Charizard ex (Charizard Genetic Apex pack)
Pikachu ex (Pikachu Genetic Apex pack)
Mewtwo ex (Mewtwo Genetic Apex pack)
Mew (reward from Complete the Kanto Pokedex! secret mission)
The Gym Leader of the Kanto Region 2
Nintendo
Players must collect all eight of the full illustration cards for every gym leader Supporter card. While The Gym Leaders of the Kanto Region is a normal mission, this sequel is a secret mission.
The rewards for completing this secret mission are 12 Pack Hourglasses, 48 Wonder Hourglasses, and 10 Shop Tickets.
Sabrina (Charizard Genetic Apex pack)
Erika (Charizard Genetic Apex pack)
Blaine (Charizard Genetic Apex pack)
Koga (Mewtwo Genetic Apex pack)
Giovanni (Mewtwo Genetic Apex pack)
Misty (Pikachu Genetic Apex pack)
Brock (Pikachu Genetic Apex pack)
Lt. Surge (Pikachu Genetic Apex pack)
The Legendary Flight Continues
Nintendo
You can complete The Legendary Flight Continues secret mission by obtaining the illustration versions of the three Legendary Birds.
While you obtain 12 Pack Hourglasses and 48 Wonder Hourglasses like normal, this secret mission also grants you the Legendary Bird Emblem, only available from this reward pool.
Moltres ex (Charizard Genetic Apex pack)
Zapdox ex (Pikachu Genetic Apex pack)
Articuno ex (Mewtwo Genetic Apex pack)
Source link
#Pokémon #TCG #Pocket #secret #missions #beat
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
The 8 best video doorbells, tried and tested | Technology
The 8 best video doorbells, tried and tested | Technology
Doorbells have evolved. Today, they watch us as we approach, let the people inside the home know we’re coming sooner than our finger can hit the button, and give them a good look at our faces before they open the door. They’re essentially security cameras with a chime function.
The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.
If you haven’t already installed one of these handy tools, there’s a huge array available. Choosing the best video doorbell can be a bewildering task, with various factors to consider, including how much of your doorstep you want to see or whether you’re prepared to pay for a subscription. To help make the decision a little bit easier, I’ve tested eight popular video doorbells to find the best.
At a glance
Why you should trust me
I’ve been testing products, including everything from vacuum cleaners and ****** lawnmowers to computers and games, for various publications for more than three decades. I’ve also owned a video doorbell for a couple of years, so I am well aware of their strengths and weaknesses. It gives me a good understanding of what I’m likely to be looking for in the next one I buy.
How I tested
The only way to test a doorbell is to stick it next to your front door and see how well it works. To achieve this, I mounted all eight on a board at doorbell height and lived with this rigged-up contraption on my doorstep for a fortnight. Delivery drivers were rightly suspicious of the number of buttons and cameras, and struggled to work out whether it was them or the doorbells that were being tested.
I’m not sure whether my neighbours noticed them all, or spotted the number of times I lapped my drive at various times of day and night to test the movement sensors. If they did, they were too polite to mention it.
I compared the doorbells by measuring how close I could get to the door before the motion detection was triggered, how much video was recorded and how useful that footage was. I timed how long it took for notifications to reach the doorbells’ apps on a smartphone and how long it took for the doorbell to send an alert or ring a chime (if included) when its button was pressed. I also tested the apps, examined the prices and considered the additional cost of subscriptions.
All doorbells that didn’t need to be returned to the brands are being donated to the British Heart Foundation.
The best video doorbells in 2024
‘I lived with this rigged-up contraption on my doorstep for a fortnight’. Photograph: Andy Shaw
Best overall: Google Nest (battery)
Doorbells can be inundated with features, and their apps can be amazing. But if they don’t do a good job of letting you know when someone approaches your door and captures a video of them, there really isn’t much point. The Nest Doorbell (battery) performed these tasks the best.
Why we love it In my tests, the Nest was a solid all-rounder. I found the viewing angle of its lens to be about perfect, not going so wide that people appear too small but still capturing enough of the surrounding area to catch people skirting around its periphery. The video and audio were as consistently clear as those on any of the doorbells I tested, and they were decent both in daylight and at night.
The Nest sometimes detected people right at the end of my drive but proved consistent at capturing movement from about 3m away. I found there was some delay between the button being pressed and notifications arriving on Nest devices and smartphones, but it averaged at a fairly reasonable five seconds. While not as fast as the doorbells that had dedicated local chimes, which tend to go off almost immediately, this was among the fastest for sending alerts to smartphones and smart speakers.
It’s a shame that … it doesn’t come with a chime. Instead, you need to buy a separate Nest Mini smart speaker, which costs £49. You also really need the Nest Aware subscription at £60 a year – without it, motion events are stored for only three hours, which isn’t hugely useful.
£139 at Currys £129.99 at Amazon
Subscription: Nest Aware (30-day storage, records only when movement triggered), £6/month or £60/year; Nest Aware Plus (60-day storage, records 24/7), £12/month or £120/year
Best budget: Blink + Sync Module 2
The Blink is the only model I reviewed that cost less than £100. Amazon’s bargain basement doorbell costs as little as £59 and, while you get what you pay for in terms of quality, it does the job.
Why we love it Price is the key selling point here because it’s significantly more affordable than its nearest competitor. However, we reviewed the version that comes with Blink’s Sync Module 2, which costs only £10 more. This plugs into a wall socket and lets you connect USB storage (I used a USB flash memory drive). The device then locally backs up video that’s saved to the cloud, so you won’t lose any footage unless your local storage fills up. You still need a (relatively affordable) subscription for motion detection to work, though.
For a cheaper camera, I was impressed with the video footage. It has a wide-angle lens, so there’s a bit of a fish-eye effect around the edges, but it’s not so wide that people approaching the doorbell look tiny.
It’s a shame that … the two-way audio isn’t great. The quality of the microphone was the worst I tested, so it’s best suited to those not planning to have lengthy conversations with people on the doorstep.
£69 at John Lewis £69.99 at Amazon
Subscription: Basic Plan, £2.50/month or £24.99/year, single device; Plus Plan, £8/month or £80/year, multiple devices
Best subscription-free: Eufy E340
Most video doorbells provide limited features without additional costs, hiding all their best bits (such as storing video for any length of time) behind a paywall. The Eufy E340 is unusual because it ditches the paid-for subscription concept entirely.
Why we love it The Eufy uses local rather than cloud storage, with 8GB built in to the device. How long that lasts before overwriting itself will depend on how busy your doorstep is. This built-in storage makes it one of the more expensive models, although that’s not its only trick. It uses two cameras, with an extra one pointed to the floor, so you can also keep an eye on parcels and packages (and analyse your visitors’ footwear).
It’s a shame that … while the stars have aligned over the Eufy’s video quality and lack of subscription costs, there were one or two occasions when movement didn’t trigger the camera early enough or at all. Ideally, I’d prefer something more reliable.
£155.17 at Amazon £179 at John Lewis
Subscription: None required
The best of the rest
Aqara G4
Best for: no charging time
The big problem with rechargeable doorbell batteries is that there’s a ******* when they have to be removed from the door and charged up, at which point any visiting friends will have to knock and unwanted visitors won’t be recorded. This doorbell uses six AA batteries rather than a rechargeable, so its only downtime is while you’re replacing them.
This model also comes with the option of recording video to a microSD card, which slots into the supplied chime, sitting safely inside the house. However, it only provides access to the past seven days of video recordings through the app. To view further back, you have to remove the memory card and watch the files through a PC.
It didn’t make the final cut because … the app is nothing short of horrible. It has an AI chatbot. No, I don’t know why either. It was also one of the slowest to send notifications to a smartphone.
£119.99 at Amazon £119.95 at Apple Store
Subscription: not required if using a memory card. A free subscription option downgrades footage to 360p and keeps it available for only seven days, so isn’t particularly useful. The paid-for tier stores at full 2K resolution and keeps it for 30 days, for $4.99/month (about £3.88) or $49.99/year (about £38.86)
skip past newsletter promotion
Get the best shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
after newsletter promotion
Ring Pro
Best for: Alexa users
The big brother of the Blink doorbell, with a price to match. If you’ve already bought into Amazon’s Echo smart speakers, this integrates smoothly with them.
It has the widest-angle lens of all the cameras here, but that makes the footage look like you’re viewing through a peephole. Faces standing any distance away are too small to capture much detail. It has one really clever feature, though: it records video constantly and uses it to extend recorded movement events further back in time, so you can see what happens in the seconds before someone arrives on camera.
It didn’t make the final cut because … it had the longest delay in sending notifications during testing, which was disappointing.
£199.99 at Amazon £199.99 at John Lewis
Subscription: Basic, £4.99/month or £49.99/year; Standard, £7.99 per month or £79.99 per year
Yale
Best for: field of view
The Yale doorbell proved reasonably responsive when it came to detecting movement, triggering when I was about 2.5m away. It has a medium field of view compared with its rivals. That means people are still reasonably sized in the captured videos, but it gets a fish-eye effect around the edges, making it tricky to catch people hiding or sneaking up.
The app is simple to use. It has few frills, but that may suit someone who doesn’t want their doorbell to be too complicated. There’s also internal storage, but only enough for two to four days, so it’s worth the subscription if you often go away for the weekend.
It didn’t make the final cut because … sound quality was the worst of the group, and the video had an unnatural colour tint.
£79.99 at Argos (with chime) £129.98 at Yale
Subscription: from £3.50/month
Ezviz EP3x Pro
Best for: not running out of battery
If you don’t like the idea of charging or changing your doorbell’s batteries, the Ezviz eliminates these problems. It comes with its own solar panel, which attaches to the back of the device with a wire. As long as it can catch a bit of sunlight, it’ll keep your doorbell going indefinitely.
The Ezviz is a two-camera system, with one pointing downwards for watching parcels. It comes with 32GB of internal storage, so you don’t have to opt for a subscription, though you can add one if you want video saved to the cloud, too.
It didn’t make the final cut because … the movement detection and video recording didn’t kick in until people were 1m away from the doorbell, so it often started recording too late.
£109.99 at Amazon
Subscription: 7-day video history, £4.99/month or £49.99/year; 30-day video history, £9.99/month or £99.99/year
Tapo D235
Best for: a good value camera with no subscription required
If our budget choice doesn’t appeal, then the Tapo D235 may suffice instead. It’s more expensive but sits comfortably in the middle of the price range of doorbells reviewed, and it can record video locally on a microSD card. However, there’s still a £2.99 a month subscription available. That lets you save captured footage to the cloud as well as or instead of a memory card and sends camera snapshots with its text alert notifications.
For the price, I was impressed with the quality of the footage captured, but it uses colour night vision as it gets dark, which was a bit too grainy. It has a wide 180-degree viewing angle and comes with a chime that sounds inside when someone pushes the doorbell button.
It didn’t make the final cut because … motion detection started at about 1.5m in our tests, which meant some movement was missed. Also, its wide-angle lens makes distant visitors appear small.
£114.99 from Tapo £119.99 from Amazon
Subscription: Not required if using a memory card. Otherwise: Basic 7-day video history, £2.49/month or £24.99/year; Premium 30-day video history, £2.99/month or £29.49/year
What you need to know
As you may expect, buying a video doorbell isn’t (just) about whether the colour matches the paint job on your front door. Smart doorbells are crammed with features designed to make you think they sound good, luring you into choosing one over another. However, you should also take into account how good they are at alerting you when people arrive at your door, and whether you’ll be able to tell who it is when you watch a video or live feed on your smartphone, as I did in my tests.
If you have an existing wired doorbell, you can use its wiring to connect most video doorbells. If you’re not a competent electrician, you may need someone to install it for you. The benefit is that a device connected in this way will ring your existing doorbell chime.
Otherwise, you’re limited to a battery doorbell. These are much easier to install, but charging them can be a faff. You usually have to remove the doorbell and charge it overnight. During that time you have no doorbell or camera. Some doorbells come with regular batteries that can simply be swapped, while others can be kept topped up using a small solar panel, either out of the box or as an additional accessory.
Talking of accessories, it’s worth checking these out before you buy. If you want a chime that rings inside, you need to choose a model that supports this and has them available to buy.
If your house is already populated with Amazon Echo or Google Nest speakers, you can use these instead of chimes. That can help make your buying decision for you – there’s no point buying a Nest doorbell if you’ve already bought into Amazon’s devices – but some doorbells will happily work with either.
Source link
#video #doorbells #tested #Technology
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Met police faces service cuts without more cash, says chief
Met police faces service cuts without more cash, says chief
BBC
The boss of the ***’s largest police force has warned it faces “eye-watering cuts” to services unless ministers increase its funding.
Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told the BBC he was “deeply troubled” by talks so far on its annual settlement for next year.
He added that the force was in a “precarious position” because previously used options to “prop up” its budget had run out.
The government has said it plans to increase the overall policing budget next year – although allocations by force are still to be negotiated.
The Met’s budget for this year is just over £3.5bn, a 3.5% increase from 2023/24, comprising £2.6bn from central government and £956m from local taxes.
Sir Mark said conversations over its funding allocation from next April – which would normally be expected to be announced in December or January – were still “ongoing” with the government and City Hall.
But, speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, he said he was “deeply troubled by the situation we appear to be heading towards”.
Policing a global capital such as London came with an “extra set of challenges”, he said, adding that per person was lower than in other cities such as New York and Sydney.
He said that the “cumulative effect of decisions over the last decade or so” had put the force in a “more and more precarious position”, and some of its buildings would be “unusable” in a few years without further investment.
“Some of the things that successive [police] commissioners and mayors have used to balance the books – like selling police stations and using reserves – all of those things have run out,” he added.
“The chancellor has been very clear – it’s a difficult public sector context.”
‘Tough choices’
“You add all those things together, and you get a dramatic change in budgets of a scale that’s never going to be absorbed by efficiencies, and is going to require some pretty eye-watering cuts to sort of to the services we provide to London.”
He added that he was not going to get into detail at this stage on the “tough choices” the force would face without an increase in resources.
But he said he planned to specific “10 or 20 things we’re going to do differently” before Christmas.
He added that the implications for policing in the capital would “become more public” in the coming weeks.
The budget for the Home Office is set to shrink by 3.3% next year in real terms, with the bulk of this coming from assumed savings on asylum support.
At last month’s Budget, the government said it planned to “increase the core government grant for police forces,” although it did not specify whether this would be in cash terms or taking account of inflation.
Before the election, Labour also said it also planned to save £360m through more efficient purchasing of police equipment, which it promised to spend on extra community support officers.
Source link
#Met #police #faces #service #cuts #cash #chief
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
YouTube creators can now make AI song remixes for Shorts
YouTube creators can now make AI song remixes for Shorts
Select YouTube creators can now produce their own remixes of existing songs. YouTube has announced a new feature for its AI-powered Dream Track tool that allows individuals to “restyle” a song and create a 30-second tune to use in a Short.
Creators in the experiment group for this feature can choose from eligible songs and then give an explanation to AI about how they want to remix it. These changes could focus on giving the song a different genre or mood — whatever twist they’re imagining. From there a new song gets produced “that reimagines the music while maintaining the essence of the original song’s vocals and lyrics,” YouTube’s announcement states. “These restyled soundtracks will have clear attribution to the original song through the Short itself and the Shorts audio pivot page, and will also clearly indicate that the track was restyled with AI.”
YouTube rolled out Dream Track in November 2023, powered by Google DeepMind’s Lyria model. It allowed a select group of US creators to make songs using the AI-generated voices of participating artists. The feature included a deal with Universal Music Group and partnerships with a slew of musicians, including John Legend, Charli XCX and Troye Sivan. It has expanded its availability to all US creators in the year since.
Source link
#YouTube #creators #song #remixes #Shorts
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Pacific finance needs top $2b as storms hit, seas rise
Pacific finance needs top $2b as storms hit, seas rise
Pacific Island nations need climate finance to top $2 billion every year in addition to existing official aid, experts warn the international climate summit.
Source link
#Pacific #finance #top #storms #hit #seas #rise
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Early ****** Friday Apple Deal – AirTag 4-Pack For $70 Restocked At Amazon
Early ****** Friday Apple Deal – AirTag 4-Pack For $70 Restocked At Amazon
Best Buy’s Early ****** Friday ***** features the best-ever deal on the 4-pack of Apple AirTags, dropping the price from $99 to only $70. Amazon is matching this deal but has already sold out once (and fast). The AirTag 4-Pack was restocked at Amazon today, November 13. We expect this offer to continue to be popular, so snag it while you can.
If you don’t need a 4-pack, you can buy single AirTags for $19 each at Amazon. This deal also sold out once already, so don’t wait too long to grab it.
AirTags may not be the most exciting products in the Apple catalog, but there’s no denying their utility. Whether you use them to track luggage, keys, or even your car, AirTags are a great way to ensure your valuables never go missing. They’re also perfect for students heading back to school–as plopping one in a backpack means you’ll never lose track of your schoolwork or books ever again.
While AirTags are fairly standard location trackers, they have a few features that set them apart from the competition. For one, they’re incredibly easy to set up–a single tap can connect them to your iPhone and get them ready for use. They also support Ultra-Wideband technology, which offers precise coordinates and enhanced tracking skills.
They even come with a built-in speaker so you can play a sound to help pinpoint their location. Toss in a bunch of impressive privacy features (all communication with the Find My network is anonymous and encrypted), and you’ve got a solid tracker–especially at this new low price.
Amazon’s ****** Friday 2024 ***** doesn’t officially start until November 21, but the retailer is matching deals featured at competing retailers. Best Buy, Walmart, and Target have all launched early ****** Friday sales.
Source link
#Early #****** #Friday #Apple #Deal #AirTag #4Pack #Restocked #Amazon
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Nothing OS 3.0 Open Beta 2 for Phone 2 and Phone 2a Rolling Out: What’s New
Nothing OS 3.0 Open Beta 2 for Phone 2 and Phone 2a Rolling Out: What’s New
Nothing OS 3.0 Open Beta 2 is now available for Phone 2 and Phone 2a users, the company has announced. Users can experience the new Android 15-based operating system (OS) before its public rollout in December and try out more features such as shared widgets, smart drawer enhancements, refined animations, and camera improvements. This release builds upon the rollout of the Nothing OS 3.0 Open Beta 1 update that was introduced earlier this month.
Notably, the beta program was first launched in October with the Phone 2a and will be available for other devices, such as the CMF Phone 1, later this year.
Nothing OS 3.0 Open Beta 2 Features
In a community post, Nothing announced that the OS 3.0 Open Beta 2 update adds more features to the already expansive list of introductions with the first beta. This includes a Shared Widgets feature which lets users see another user’s widgets displayed on their home screen and interact with them through reactions. This feature is exclusive to interactions between Nothing smartphones. Animations for Quick Settings have been refined, including those for Bluetooth, tile resizing, swiping interactions, and tile transitions.
The Carl Pei-led company introduced a Smart Drawer powered by artificial intelligence (AI) with the Nothing OS 3.0 Open Beta 1 which can automatically arrange apps in separate category folders based on usage. The Open Beta 2 is said to bring enhanced accuracy to this feature, while also adding an auto-sort feature.
Nothing Phone 2 and Phone 2a users will also be able to take advantage of camera enhancements with the update. It is claimed to deliver improved stability when switching between camera modes, an upgraded HDR algorithm for better picture quality, an optimised portrait mode, and enhanced brightness when using the Ultra HDR Mode.
Nothing OS 3.0 Open Beta 2 brings other visual and performance updates. There is now an AI-powered selection and prioritisation of the frequently used apps, support for a refresh rate of up to 90 frames per second (fps) in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, an onboarding guide for first-time Pop-up view users, and other general bug fixes and performance improvements.
Source link
#Open #Beta #Phone #Phone #Rolling #Whats
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
A Mysterious Extinct Species Seeded Their Genes in Modern Humans
A Mysterious Extinct Species Seeded Their Genes in Modern Humans
The tree of life is often more like a vine that snakes back on itself, with tendrils briefly embracing before they reach for the sky or wither into nothing.
While much has been said about the Neanderthal and human branches of humanity, it’s becoming increasingly clear our past has had frequent encounters with another close relative known as the Denisovans (pronounced duh-nee-suh-vns).
A recently published review of the existing research on Denisovan DNA by Trinity College Dublin population geneticists Linda Ongaro and Emilia Huerta-Sanchez brings us up to date on how our own biology has been influenced by the history of a people we still know so very little about.
According to their interpretation of the evidence, a number of Denisovan populations that were adapted to environments across the ****** continent and beyond passed their genes to our own recent ancestors on multiple occasions, bestowing us with a selection of their advantages just as Neanderthals have done.
“It’s a common misconception that humans evolved suddenly and neatly from one common ancestor, but the more we learn the more we realize interbreeding with different hominins occurred and helped to shape the people we are today,” says Ongaro, first author of the recent study.
Compared with the century or two that scientists have spent examining Neanderthal ********, graves, and artifacts, our academic acquaintance with the Denisovans is remarkably recent, and limited. A mere handful of teeth and bones belonging to these extinct relatives have been recovered over recent decades.
Following a series of genetic analyses that began with a young female’s fingerbone in 2010, the ******** are now understood to belong to a previously undescribed hominin group that became genetically distinct from Neanderthals around 400,000 years ago – most likely a few hundred thousand years after Neanderthals became distinct from our own ancestors.
Our understanding of the range, culture, and adaptations of the Denisovans has been building slowly over the years, hinting at a rich diversity of humans with a genetic legacy that stretches from Siberia to South East Asia and across Oceania to even the Americas.
“By leveraging the surviving Denisovan segments in modern human genomes scientists have uncovered evidence of at least three past events whereby genes from distinct Denisovan populations made their way into the genetic signatures of modern humans,” says Ongaro.
Branches of Denisovan populations have affected the genes of modern human populations across Oceania, South East Asia, and Siberia. (Ongaro et al., Nature Genetics, 2024)
Among extant genes known to have originated among Denisovans are sequences common in Tibetan populations that help the body cope with relatively low amounts of oxygen, DNA that gives Papuan immunity a boost, and genes found among Inuit lineages that influence the burning of fats to cope better with the cold.
These join the diverse genes swapped through frequent interactions with Neanderthals that have helped some of us weather pandemics, influenced our appearance, and even shaped our brains.
Ongaro and Huerta-Sanchez’s review serves to highlight not just what we’ve learned, but just how little we know about the way distinct pockets of modern humans have been changed by encounters with these extinct relatives.
“There are numerous future directions for research that will help us tell a more complete story of how the Denisovans impacted modern day humans, including more detailed genetic analyses in understudied populations, which could reveal currently hidden traces of Denisovan ancestry,” says Ongaro.
This research was published in Nature Genetics.
Related News
Source link
#Mysterious #Extinct #Species #Seeded #Genes #Modern #Humans
Pelican News
View the full article at [Hidden Content]
Privacy Notice: We utilize cookies to optimize your browsing experience and analyze website traffic. By consenting, you acknowledge and agree to our Cookie Policy, ensuring your privacy preferences are respected.
