Blackfire

V2 text, effects, style, brushes,

V2. Effect,Text,Colors

: Name of the game: CODE VIEN Price: 8.99 $ Link Store: Click here Offer ends up after X hours: Offer ends 10 April Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 10 (64-bit) Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 Memory: 6 GB RAM Graphics: GeForce GTX 760 or Radeon HD 7850 DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 35 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX compatible soundcard or onboard chipset Additional Notes: Estimated performance: 1080p/60fps with graphics settings at "Low". Framerate might drop in graphics-intensive scenes. - 64-bit processor and operating system are required. RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 10 (64-bit) Processor: Intel Core i5-7400 or AMD Ryzen 3 2200G Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: GeForce GTX 960 or Radeon R9 380X DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 35 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX compatible soundcard or onboard chipset Additional Notes: Estimated performance: 1080p/60fps with graphics settings at "High". Framerate might drop in graphics-intensive scenes. - 64-bit processor and operating system are required. - Windows 10 (Version 1809 or later) and a 4GB VRAM GPU (graphics board or video card) are required for DirectX 12 API.

Per Ars Technica(opens in new tab), the limit, set at five million files, started cropping up for some Google Drive users in February 2023, despite Google offering no warning that the cap was being introduced, and offering a notification that wasn't all that clear at explaining what the problem was: "The limit for the number of items, whether trashed or not, created by this account has been exceeded." Said notification has evolved since then, and now reportedly reads: "Error 403: This account has exceeded the creation limit of 5 million items. To create more items, move items to the trash and delete them forever new policy (which remains undocumented across all pricing pages) means Google Drive customers are being prevented from accessing the full extent of the storage they’ve paid for. However, it’s worth noting that 5 million files, in real terms, is a pretty big allowance. For Google Drive’s 2TB offering - the highest personal plan available - the average file size across an account would have to be 400 kilobytes (KB). There are certainly instances where that may be the case - the storage of large amounts of record data, for example. But in the vast majority of cases, users shouldn’t run up against the limit. Business users are even less likely to face issues with the limit. A spokesperson for Google told Ars Technica that the limit applied to "how many items one user can create in any Drive," rather than a blanket cap. Details were thin on the ground, but they also noted that the new limit is "a safeguard to prevent misuse of our system in a way that might impact the stability and safety of the system." [ Https://www.techradar.com/news/google-drive-has-suddenly-decided-to-introduce-a-file-cap-but-you-might-never-hit-it ]

Ray tracing is fo' real peeps. For proof, look no further than the latest Steam Hardware Survey(opens in new tab), which places the a ray-tracing-capable GPU at the top of the tables for the first time. The GPU in question? None other than the Nvidia RTX 3060(opens in new tab), now the most po[CENSORED]r graphics card among surveyed Steam users. If that seems inevitable given Nvidia's first RTX GPUs launched over four and a half years ago and pretty soon all new graphics cards will have hardware ray tracing acceleration, there is a catch. This particular Steam Survey looks a little fishy. If you track the RTX 3060 over recent months, you'll see it gradually increasing market share over time in the survey. In November last year it was 3.41% of users, 3.88% the following month, it then actually dipped slightly to 3.67% in January, before hitting 4.36% in February and then...kaboom...10.67% of all Steam users in March. RTX 2060(opens in new tab) saw a pretty big jump up in March, too, having sat pretty level for the previous four months. That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense given it's an old GPU that is essentially no longer on sale in most markets. AMD also saw a sudden drop in overall GPU market share in March to 10.8% from 14.9% in February having remained at around 15% plus or minus a decimal point for several months previously. In the broad scheme of things, that's a huge change in one month and doesn't look plausible. Dig further into the data and one particular stat jumps out. In March, the proportion of surveyed Steam users reporting Simplified Chinese as their OS language exploded from 27.08% to 52.7%. That, again, seems like a fairly bizarre and unlikely scenario. It's as if an army of Chinese gaming cafes have suddenly been given internet access. Anyway, we'll probably never know for sure what it going on here. Some might argue this reflects a sudden unleashing of ex-mining cards. But was the RTX 3060 really ever big in mining? One thing is for sure. We've seen fishy looking Steam surveys before. So, we'd advise waiting a few months for the numbers to settle down before assuming any of this is terribly accurate. [https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidias-rtx-3060-is-the-new-steam-survey-king-but-something-fishy-is-going-on/]

It felt like just another flight for South African pilot Rudolph Erasmus, until he noticed an extra passenger on his plane at 11,000ft in the air. However, it wasn't a human, but a cobra slithering under his seat. "To be truly honest, it's as if my brain did not register what was going on," he told the BBC. "It was a moment of [...] awe," he added, saying he initially thought the cold feeling on his back was his water bottle. "I felt this cool sensation, sort of, crawling up my shirt," he said, thinking he may not have closed the bottle properly and water might have been dripping down his shirt. "As I turned to the left and looked down I saw the cobra [...] receding its head backwards underneath the seat." He then made an emergency landing on his flight from Bloemfontein to Pretoria. The private plane, a Beechcraft Baron 58, was carrying four passengers, as well as the snake. A bite from a Cape cobra is lethal and can kill someone in just 30 minutes, so not wanting to cause panic, Mr Erasmus says he thought carefully before calmly telling those on board that there was an extra unwanted voyager. He was also "so scared the snake might have gone to the back and cause mass the end, he decided the tell them. "I did inform the passengers: 'Listen the snake is inside the aircraft, it's underneath my seat, so let's try and get down to the ground as soon as we can.'" So how did the passengers react? Mr Erasmus described a moment of absolute silence: "You could hear a needle drop and I think everyone froze for a moment or two." Pilots are trained for lots of scenarios, but certainly not for dealing with snakes in the cockpit he said, telling the BBC that panicking would have just made the situation worse. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Welkom. However, the presence of the snake, although shocking, was not a total surprise. Two people working at Worcester flying club where the plane first took off, said they had earlier spotted a reptile taking refuge under the aircraft. They tried to "grab" it, but without success. Mr Erasmus said he tried to find the snake before boarding the aircraft with his passengers, but "unfortunately it was not there, so we all then safely assumed that it must have crawled out overnight or earlier that morning, which was on Monday". The slithering passenger is still missing, as engineers who then stripped the plane are yet to find it. Mr Erasmus has been hailed a hero, with South African civil aviation commissioner, Poppy Khosa, praising his "great airmanship indeed which saved all lives on board," according to the News24 site. But the modest pilot says he doesn't feel like he's special for what he did: "I think that's a bit blown up if I can be direct," he said. "It's also my passengers that remained calm as well." [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-65188013]

At least four young children have been killed by a man wielding a hatchet in a kindergarten in the city of Blumenau in southern Brazil, local officials say. Another four children were injured by the 25-year-old man who entered the creche at around 09:00 local time (12:00 GMT) on Wednesday. At least one of them is reportedly in a serious condition. Police told local media that the attacker had surrendered and was in police custody. In a statement, military police said that the assailant had handed himself in at one of their stations in the town. Firefighters said three boys and a girl were killed in the playground. They are thought to have been between four and seven years old. In total, around 40 children had been inside the Cantinho Bom Pastor nursery - which translates as Good Shepherd - at the time of the attack. They added that the assailant had jumped over a wall in order to gain entrance to the privately run kindergarten and had apparently targeted the victims at random. A teacher, Simone Aparecida Camargo, said it was "a scene that you'd never imagine you'd see in your life". "A colleague came running saying 'close the door, close the window, because someone is breaking into the building. At first we thought it was a robbery because he tried to break in, so I locked the babies in the bathroom, then someone came to the door saying 'he's come to kill'." She said the entire preschool class had been in the playground. Ms Camargo added that as well as a hatchet, the man also carried other weapons, although she did not specify what these were. Parents ran to the kindergarten as news of the incident spread. City officials have suspended classes in Blumenau until at least tomorrow. The governor of Santa Catarina state - where Blumenau is located - has declared three days of mourning. It is not the first time a kindergarten in the state has been the target of an attack. In 2021, an 18-year-old man killed two staff members and three toddlers in a creche in the municipality of Saudades. The incident also comes just 10 days after a teenager stabbed a teacher to death and injured another four people at a school in São Paulo. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tweeted that "there is no greater pain than that of a family that loses its children or grandchildren, even more so when it's through an act of violence against innocent children who can't defend themselves". The city has about 360,000 inhabitants and is a po[CENSORED]r destination with visitors exploring the German heritage of the region. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-65192957]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has visited Poland, as his hosts promised to send more fighter jets to Ukraine. President Andrzej Duda said he would send Poland's remaining fleet of MiG-29 jets "if there is still such a need". Mr Zelensky thanked the country for its support against Russia's invasion. It came as Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Western intelligence services of being involved in terror attacks on Russia. Speaking at the Kremlin's security council, Mr Putin did not give any evidence but said: "There is every reason to say that the resources of third countries, Western intelligence services, are engaged in the preparation of such sabotage and acts of terrorism." Mr Zelensky arrived in Warsaw on Wednesday morning - marking his first official visit to Poland since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year. Poland has been a key ally in supporting Ukraine and is usually at the forefront in pushing for arms supplies to its neighbour. It was the first country to pledge Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, and on Wednesday committed more Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets. Mr Duda reiterated the country firmly supported Kyiv's bid to join Nato and said he was trying to get "additional guarantees, security guarantees, which will strengthen Ukraine's military potential". Earlier, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that for Ukraine to join Nato, the country would have to be independent and democratic - two criteria currently unable to be fulfilled as a result of Russia's invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously used Ukraine's desire to join Nato as a justification for the invasion. Mr Zelensky's visit came as Poland's agriculture minister resigned as farmers complain about cheap Ukrainian grain. Poland has been gripped by a wave of protests over the fact that Ukrainian grain is reducing the market price of Polish grain, and farmers argue the EU should provide assistance. Agriculture minister, Henry Kowalczyk said his decision to resign was prompted by a recent EU proposal to extend the tax breaks on imports of the Ukrainian grain. He said he he did not believe the "basic demands of the farmers will not be met by the commission", after Warsaw requested assistance from the EU to minimise the impact of Ukrainian grain on the market. Mr Zelensky also addressed the issue during his visit, telling reporters that he expected decisions soon that would alleviate the farmers' anger. "We have found a way out," he said. "I believe that in the coming days and weeks we will finally resolve all issues as there cannot be any questions, any complications between such close partners and real friends as Poland and Ukraine." While the two leaders met in Warsaw, Mr Putin took aim at Western security services, accusing them of having helped Kyiv stage "terror attacks". He also accused Ukraine of committing crimes against Russian officials and journalists with the help of Western resources in a televised meeting with officials. Mr Putin's comments come just three days after the death of pro-military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed in St Petersburg. Russia has charged the suspect in the attack with terrorism. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65194094]

Hey, you were already part of the project, and I added you initially because of your excellent activity and interest in it. However, I've noticed that your activity has decreased recently. Nevertheless, I believe everyone deserves a second chance, so I'm willing to give you a chance to improve. #Pro But keep in mind that we also need to hear @Revo opinion since he's one who removed you from the project. I respect the decisions made by other leaders. Best regards, Blackfire

Welcome.

Voted

Just like how you use AirDrop, Nearby Share lets you quickly and easily share files between nearby Android devices. This feature tends to be quicker than sending files via an email or Google Drive link, and is simpler than trying to transfer them over a typical Bluetooth connection. Nearby Share just got a lot better, however, as it now lets you do more than just ping files between the best Android phones, tablets, and best Chromebooks – you can now send files to your Windows PC, too. The introduction of the Nearby Share for Windows beta gives the feature a serious boost over AirDrop, as Apple’s feature is locked to its ecosystem of iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Best of all, you can join the beta right now and start sharing your phone files via the new Nearby Share for Windows app Unlike other recent Google betas – like the Google Bard beta – where you have to sign up and wait to be given access, you can get started with Nearby Share for Windows right now if you want. You’ll first want to head to Google’s official page(opens in new tab), and there you should see a “Get started” button near the top. Click and you’ll download the installation file for the Nearby Share PC tool – open it to begin the installation process. Once the installation is complete, you should see a window pop up that asks you to sign in to Google and set your Nearby Share preferences. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be ready to share files using Nerby Share with your computer; if you ever need to tweak your settings, you can click the gear icon in the Nearby Share Windows app to change settings like your PC’s name, where files get sent to and its visibility to other devices. There are a few limitations to what PCs can support Nearby Share – it’ll need to be running Windows 10 or later and it’ll need to support Bluetooth. Elsewhere, Google isn't only gaining on Apple in the file-sharing world, its Google AirTags could take over the world, too.

Oil prices have surged after several of the world's largest exporters announced surprise cuts in production. The price of Brent crude oil is trading close to $85 a barrel after jumping by almost 6%. Economists warned that higher oil prices could make it harder to bring down the cost of living. But the RAC motoring group said it does not expect petrol prices to rise unless the higher oil price is sustained over several days. Brent crude prices rose after Saudi Arabia, Iraq and several Gulf states said on Sunday they were cutting output by more than one million barrels of oil a day In addition, Russia said it will extend its cut of half a million barrels per day until the end of the year. Energy giants BP and Shell saw their share prices rise on Monday, with both rising more than 4%. Oil prices soared when Russia invaded Ukraine, but are now back at levels seen before the conflict began However, the US has been calling for producers to increase output in order to push energy prices lower. A spokesperson for the US National Security Council said: "We don't think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty - and we've made that clear." High energy and fuel prices have helped to drive up inflation - the rate at which prices rise - putting pressure on many households' finances. Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG, warned that the oil price surge could make the battle to bring down inflation harder. However, she said that rising oil prices won't necessarily lead to higher household energy bills. "The energy price cap, that households benefit from, has already been determined using earlier market expectations," she said. "Plus, when you look at energy use in households, it tends to be more gas-heavy rather than oil." There have also been fears that there could be an impact on transport costs, if fuel prices rise. The RAC said it does not expect this to happen in the short-term. "Any sudden increase in the cost of oil shouldn't result in a rise in the UK average price of petrol for a fortnight, unless of course the barrel price stays higher for several days," RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams told the BBC This surprise announcement is significant for several reasons. Despite price fluctuations in recent months, there were concerns that global demand for oil would outstrip supply, especially towards the end of the year. The increase in oil prices following Sunday's announcement could potentially put more pressure on inflation - worsening the cost-of-living crisis and raising the risk of recession. Interestingly, this announcement came just a day before the Opec+ meeting. There were indications from members that they would stick to the same production policy, meaning there would be no fresh cuts, which is why it has come as a huge surprise. The development will also likely further strain ties between the US and Saudi Arabia-led Opec+. The White House had called on the group to increase supplies to cool down prices and check Russian finances. However, Sunday's announcement also underlines the close cooperation between oil-producing countries and Russia. The latest reductions come on top of a cut announced by Opec+ in October last year of two million barrels per day (bpd). However, last year's cut came despite calls from the US and other countries for oil producers to pump more crude. When the Opec+ group announced its production cuts in October, US President Joe Biden said he was "disappointed by the short-sighted decision https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65157555

Russian investigators have detained a woman in their hunt for the killers of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in Sunday's blast at a St Petersburg cafe. In video released by authorities - most likely recorded under duress - Darya Trepova is heard admitting she handed over a statuette that later blew up. But the 26-year-old does not say she knew there would be an explosion, nor does she admit any further role. Investigators said they had evidence the attack was organised from Ukraine. However, Kyiv officials said it was a case of Russian infighting. More than 30 people were wounded in the bombing in Russia's second city. Tatarsky (real name Maxim Fomin), aged 40, had been attending a patriotic meeting with supporters in the cafe as a guest speaker late on Sunday afternoon. Images showed the box being placed on a table in the cafe before the woman sat down. Another video showed a statue being handed to Tatarsky. In a brief excerpt of her interrogation released by the Russian authorities, Darya Trepova appeared under duress as she sighed repeatedly. When her interrogator asked if she knew why she was detained, she replied: "I would say for being at the scene of Vladlen Tatarsky's murder... I brought the statuette there which blew up." Asked who gave it to her she responded: "Can I tell you later please?" What we know about detained cafe blast suspect Russia's anti-terrorism committee alleged the "terror attack" was organised by Ukrainian special services "with people co-operating with" opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The investigative committee later went further, saying it had evidence it was "planned and organised from Ukrainian territory". It was working to establish the "entire chain" of people involved, it added. Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, which has released a series of exposés of corruption involving the Putin entourage, said it was "very convenient" for the Kremlin to blame its critics when Navalny was due to go on trial soon for extremism. Navalny has been in jail ever since he returned to Russia from Germany in January 2021. He survived a nerve agent attack in Russia in August 2020, which was blamed on Russian FSB security service agents. Foundation head Ivan Zhdanov said everything pointed to FSB agents themselves. "Naturally we have nothing to do with this," he said, adding that Russia needed an external enemy in the form of Ukraine and a domestic one in Navalny's team. Ms Trepova was detained in a St Petersburg flat owned by a friend of her husband's, Russian reports said. On the day of Russia's full-scale invasion last year she was reportedly detained for a number of days for taking part in an anti-war protest. The cafe, Street Food Bar No 1 near the River Neva, was once owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin - who runs Russia's notorious Wagner mercenary group which has taken part in much of the fighting in Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Prigozhin said he had handed it over to Cyber Front Z, a group that calls itself "Russia's information troops" and said it had hired out the cafe for the evening. Prigozhin paid tribute to Tatarsky in a late-night video which he declared was filmed from the town hall in Bakhmut. He displayed a flag which he said had the words "in good memory of Vladlen Tatarsky". On Monday, Tatarsky was awarded the posthumous Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin. Tatarsky, a vocal supporter of Russia's war in Ukraine, was neither a Russian official nor a military officer. He was a well-known blogger with more than half a million followers and, like Prigozhin, had a criminal past. Born in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, he said he joined Russian-backed separatists when they released him from jail, where he was serving time for armed robbery. He was part of a pro-Kremlin military blogger community that has taken on a relatively high-profile role since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Tatarsky is among those who have gone so far as to criticise the Russian authorities, slamming the military and even Mr Putin for setbacks on the battlefield. Unusually, Tatarsky took up arms in combat operations and reported from the front line. He claimed to have helped launch combat drones and build fortifications. Last September, he posted a video inside the Kremlin where Mr Putin was proclaiming the annexation of four part-occupied Ukrainian regions. "We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone as necessary. Just as we like it," Tatarsky told his followers. The military bloggers have provided information about the war in a country where many have become frustrated with the lack of accurate information from official sources. Information provided by the Russian military, Kremlin-controlled television and state officials has been criticised for being inaccurate. Last week, several official Russian sources shared a video allegedly showing Ukrainian troops harassing civilians. Western analysts proved using open-source information that the video had been staged. Some pro-Kremlin bloggers also slammed the video as a crude fake. Much of the bloggers' pro-Russian material is not factual either. Who was behind Tatarsky's murder is unclear, but it is reminiscent of the killing of Darya Dugina, a vocal supporter of the war and the daughter of a Russian ultra-nationalist. She died in a car bomb attack near Moscow last August. While Russian officials pinned the blame firmly on Ukraine, in Kyiv presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the blast was part of a Russian "internal political fight", tweeting: "Spiders are eating each other in a jar." The Ukrainians have proved themselves as more than capable of carrying out drone attacks and explosions deep inside Russian territory in recent months. They rarely admit involvement but often drop hints. Yevgeny Prigozhin said he did not think it was the Ukrainian government: "I think there is a group of radicals operating, which unlikely has something to do with the government." The blast could be linked to Russian political infighting. There are now a lot of angry men carrying guns in Russia. With the military running low on troops, convicts have been let out of prison, handed weapons and sent to the front. Russian authorities have also conducted large-scale recruitment campaigns for volunteer fighters and recruited some 300,000 men in a "partial mobilisation". The Kommersant newspaper recently reported that the number of murders committed in Russia last year rose for the first time in 20 years. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65161095]

A girl's rare infection could have been linked to an encounter with an iguana that had a craving for cake, scientists suspect. CNN reported that a scientific presentation on the unidentified 3-year-old girl's case will be given at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases this month. Last March, the unnamed girl was on vacation with her parents in Costa Rica. Her parents gave her a cake as she hung out by the water. A wild iguana ran up to her, bit her finger and stole her cake. "It was trying to mark its territory or something like that," Dr Jordan Kit Mah, a medical microbiologist at Stanford University told the Guardian. Iguanas are typically harmless and herbivores, but this one appears to have developed a liking for sweets, CNN reported. Her parents noticed that the bite was superficial but still took her to a local clinic, which disinfected the wound and gave her antibiotics. The wound healed, but five months later, they noticed a bump in the same spot. While the girl said the bump did not hurt, it had grown to the size of a coin, and was a reddish-bluish color, the Guardian reported. The family took the child to the doctor. At first, the parents hadn't thought the iguana bite had anything to do with it. Doctors suspected it might be a cyst but as it continued to grow, the parents realized the bump was in the same spot as the iguana bite, The bump continued to grow and began causing mild pain, which sent the girl to an orthopedist. She has a biopsy which revealed a rare infection. The little girl had developed Mycobacterium marinum, which typically causes tuberculosis-like illness in fish but rarely infects humans. Humans usually get this infection if they have open wounds and come into contact with contaminated water. Mah told CNN that he believes this is the first time a human has gotten this infection from an iguana bite. "There is we know a lot about animal bites and bacteria, infections, following, let's say, dogs or cats, but there really isn't much for lizards, let alone iguana," he said. "I don't think people should be afraid, but doctors should be aware of the possibility." He told the Guardian that he's not surprised it took this long for the girl to develop symptoms since the bacteria is very slow to grow and has a long incubation period. The infection doesn't respond well to typical antibiotics but the little girl was put on rifampin, an antimicrobial, and clarithromycin, an antibiotic and according to Mah, is improving. "Typically, with these infections, because they take a very long time to grow and they're a little bit more fastidious, you need to treat them for a longer period of time, sometimes several months," Mah told CNN. "So she's doing better. I wouldn't say 100%, but she's doing a lot better than she was initially." [https://www.insider.com/child-rare-infection-iguana-bite-scientists-study-2023-4]

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Windows 11 has received another preview build in the Dev channel, and it brings in a number of tweaks and additions, including beefing up a feature that should help your PC use a bit less electricity. That would be Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC), which as of preview build 23424, works not just with laptops on battery power, but when they’re plugged in – and indeed with desktop PCs too. What CABC does is intelligently dim (or lighten) certain parts of the screen depending on what content is being displayed, the idea being that it can cut back power usage without hampering the ‘visual experience In other words, the tweaking on the dimming front shouldn’t make any noticeable difference to the image you’re looking at on-screen, and it should save you a bit of power (and therefore cash, over time). The feature can be set to be always on, or it can be disabled, or alternatively you can choose to have CABC kick in only if you’re on battery power (on a laptop of course). What else is new for build 23424? There’s a new widget board which is now bigger, so it’s three columns wide (rather than two) and much roomier (assuming the device’s screen has enough real-estate to cope). Along with this, there’s the usual gamut of fixes and minor tweaks, all of which are detailed in the usual blog post(opens in new tab) published with every preview build. Notable pieces of minor tinkering include improving the speed of running searches within the Settings panel, and a change to produce better performance when playing games with a high polling mouse (a super-precise fancy gaming mouse, basically). Analysis: Small savings that could add up (we hope) Bringing adaptive brightness control to a desktop PC might sound a bit daft, considering it’s really more a battery-saving feature for laptops. But if like us, you have your PC turned on for about 60 or 70 hours a week, tiny little power savings will add up across the year – especially with energy pricing being what it is these days (sky-high where we are). So, this is a useful addition we think, providing that as Microsoft asserts, there’s no noticeable hampering of the quality of the monitor image when the feature is turned on. Of course, you don’t have to switch it on if you don’t want to. Microsoft’s work with widgets seems to be progressing at a speedy pace, too. The more expansive widget board was previously seen in limited testing in the Canary channel, which is the earliest test channel, just a week ago. Now it’s already in the Dev channel and more widely rolled out. There are other widget-related changes theoretically in the pipeline that we might see soon, too. That includes Microsoft’s experiments with animated icons for widgets (which we have to say look quite nifty), and the rumored possibility has been floated that users may eventually be allowed to drop widgets onto the desktop. It seems fairly clear that widgets are quite a big thing for Microsoft, so expect to see more of them in Windows 11 down the line.

Earlier this week, we reported on the open letter from the Future of Life Institute (FLI) calling for a six-month pause on training AI systems "more powerful" than the recently released Chat GPT-4. The letter was signed by the likes of Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque. The Guardian(opens in new tab) reports, however, that the letter is facing harsh criticism from the very sources it cites. On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots(opens in new tab)" is an influential paper criticizing the environmental costs and inherent biases of large language models like Chat GPT, and the paper is one of the primary sources cited by this past week's open letter. Co-author Margaret Mitchell, who previously headed up ethical AI research at Google, told Reuters that, "By treating a lot of questionable ideas as a given, the letter asserts a set of priorities and a narrative on AI that benefits the supporters of FLI.” Mitchell continues, “Ignoring active harms right now is a privilege that some of us don’t have University of Connecticut assistant professor Shiri Dori-Hacohen, whose work was also cited by the FLI letter, had similarly harsh words. "AI does not need to reach human-level intelligence to exacerbate those risks," she said to Reuters, referring to existential challenges like climate change, further adding that, "There are non-existential risks that are really, really important, but don’t receive the same kind of Hollywood-level attention." University of Connecticut assistant professor Shiri Dori-Hacohen, whose work was also cited by the FLI letter, had similarly harsh words. "AI does not need to reach human-level intelligence to exacerbate those risks," she said to Reuters, referring to existential challenges like climate change, further adding that, "There are non-existential risks that are really, really important, but don’t receive the same kind of Hollywood-level attention." On March 31, the authors of "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots," including Mitchell, linguistics professor Emlily M. Bender, computer scientist Timni Gebru, and linguist Angelina McMillan-Major, issued a formal response(opens in new tab) to the FLI open letter via ethical AI research institute DAIR. "The harms from so-called AI are real and present and follow from the acts of people and corporations deploying automated systems," the letter's summary reads. "Regulatory efforts should focus on transparency, accountability and preventing exploitative labor practices." The researchers acknowledge some measures proposed by the FLI letter that they agree with, but state that "these are overshadowed by fearmongering and AI hype, which steers the discourse to the risks of imagined 'powerful digital minds' with 'human-competitive intelligence.'" the more immediate and pressing dangers of AI technology, they argue, are: "worker exploitation(opens in new tab) and massive data theft(opens in new tab) to create products that profit a handful of entities the explosion of synthetic media in the world, which both reproduces systems of oppression(opens in new tab) and endangers our information ecosystem(opens in new tab) [admit it, you thought the swagged-out Pope Francis coat(opens in new tab) was real for a second, too!] the concentration of power(opens in new tab) in the hands of a few people which exacerbates social inequities(opens in new tab)." The Stochastic Parrot authors point out that the FLI subscribes to the "longtermist" philosophical school that's become extremely po[CENSORED]r among Silicon Valley luminaries in recent years, an ideology that prizes the wellbeing of theoretical far-future humans (trillions of them, supposedly) over the actually extant people of today. You may be familiar with the term from the ongoing saga of collapsed crypto exchange FTC and its disgraced leader, Sam Bankman-Fried(opens in new tab), who was outspoken in his advocacy of "effective altruism" for future humans who will have to deal with the Singularity and the like. Why worry about climate change and the global food supply when we have to ensure that the Dyson Spheres of 5402 AD don't face a nanobot "Grey Goo(opens in new tab)" apocalypse scenario! The Stochastic Parrot authors effectively sum up their case close to the end of the letter: "Contrary to the [FLI letter's] narrative that we must 'adapt' to a seemingly pre-determined technological future and cope 'with the dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause,' we do not agree that our role is to adjust to the priorities of a few privileged individuals and what they decide to build and proliferate." Instead, the letter writers argue, "We should be building machines that work for us, instead of 'adapting' society to be machine readable and writable. The current race towards ever larger 'AI experiments' is not a preordained path where our only choice is how fast to run, but rather a set of decisions driven by the profit motive."