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This round-up brings you the key stories from the energy sector over recent weeks. Top energy news: Global renewables generation hits 40%; Britain’s last coal-fired power plant to close; AI “could hurt oil prices in next decade”. For more on the World Economic Forum’s work in the energy space, visit the Centre for Energy and Materials. 1. New milestone for clean energy Zero-carbon sources made up over 40% of the electricity the world generated for the first time ever last year, according to new research. Two reports from BloombergNEF show that 14% of this power came from wind and solar, and almost 91% of global power capacity additions came from those sources, versus 6% from fossil fuels. This momentum is set to continue, with renewable energy attracting $313bn of new investment in the first half of 2024. This is a similar amount to the same period in 2023. “We have seen a step-change in renewable energy compared to a few years before,” said Sofia Maia, a lead author of the BloombergNEF research. “There’s now no question this is the largest source of new power generation, wherever you go.” The World Economic Forum’s Fostering Effective Energy Transition 2024 report notes that while there has been a marked increase in the adoption of clean energy sources, there is still work to be done. A lack of consistent and balanced progress highlights that many countries are facing energy transition challenges, it says – and public-private collaboration to create innovative solutions, mobilize investment and reform policy is needed. 2. Britain’s reliance on coal set to end this month Britain will make a vital step towards decarbonizing its electricity supply when its final coal-fired power plant closes at the end of September. As recently as 1990, coal supplied 80% of the country’s electricity – but last year it was just 1%. About a third of Britain’s electricity now comes from gas, another third from wind and solar, with bioenergy and nuclear making up the rest. With the closure of the plant, located in Nottinghamshire, the country is set to be the first G7 nation to stop using coal for electricity generation. The new Labour government wants to make Britain a “clean energy superpower” by 2030, by ramping up wind and solar capacity and investing in carbon capture and storage. Renewables are projected to make up 83% of Britain's electricity generation by 2050, the Financial Times reports. The government recently announced it had approved 131 new renewable energy projects in its latest auction round – with a significant increase in offshore wind. 3. News in brief: More energy stories from around the world Artificial intelligence that reduces costs through improved logistics and resource allocation could hit oil prices over the next decade, according to Goldman Sachs. Benchmark prices for crude oil have fallen sharply in the past week, Reuters reports, amid concerns about a weaker global economy and oil demand. Permits for coal-fired power plants in China have dropped by more than 80%, according to a new report. Jobs in the US clean energy sector grew at more than double the rate of the country’s overall jobs last year, the US Energy Department has reported. Australia’s electricity authority has said the country’s power grid will continue to be reliable as it shifts from coal to renewable sources, but only if investment in new generation from sources including wind and solar is delivered on time. South Korea is accelerating its push to export nuclear reactors to Europe, the Financial Times reports.4. More on energy from the Forum Once thought almost impossible to decarbonize, high-emitting sectors such as heavy industry are taking crucial steps – led by a collection of leading global companies. Read more about their commitments and achievements so far. Virtual power plants – decentralized battery networks of sources such as EVs – could be vital to the energy transition. Read more about what they are and how they work. As the hydrogen industry faces financial and demand-side challenges, many are increasingly looking to white hydrogen as an efficient alternative. This piece answers five pressing questions. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/09/global-renewables-generation-top-energy-stories/ Discov

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Apple took the wraps off the AirPods 4 at the “Its Glowtime” event on Monday. Its latest wearable audio product brings enhancements to the listening experience, in addition to the introduction of active noise cancellation (ANC) on the base AirPods. They also get features which leverage machine learning and gesture control. Along with the debut of the AirPods 4 at Apple Park, the Cupertino-based tech giant has also made the switch over to USB Type-C on the AirPods Max, which replaces the proprietary lightning port on the headphone. AirPods 4 Price AirPods 4 are available in two variants; with and without ANC. AirPods 4 (without ANC) start at $129 (roughly Rs. 11,000) in the US, while the AirPods 4 with ANC costs $179 (roughly Rs. 15,000). Apple's newest audio product is available for pre-order starting today, and its sale will commence on September 20. AirPods 4 Specifications AirPods 4 now come with active noise cancellation (ANC), in addition to a dedicated transparency mode - features that were previously limited to the AirPods Pro (2nd generation) and AirPods Max. They are powered by a new Apple H2 chip and feature a new acoustic architecture which is claimed to improve the sound quality. AirPods 4 also offer personalised spatial audio, adaptive audio, and conversational awareness. Apple's latest base TWS earbuds also come with machine learning, which allows the user to leverage gestures such as nodding to take a call. They also offer voice isolation and force sensors, similar to the flagship AirPods Pro (2nd generation). The company has introduced a new USB Type-C charging case which offers a total playtime of 30 hours. Additionally, AirPods 4 now also support wireless charging capability. Other Announcements In addition to AirPods 4, Apple has also introduced new colourways for the AirPods Max - its over-the-head headphones. They are now available in Blue, Midnight, and Starlight colourways and offer personalised spatial audio.The tech giant has also updated its AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with new health-centric features. They now come with an in-built hearing test feature which lets the wearer test their hearing. AirPods Pro (2nd generation) also support hearing aid capability with the introduction of a new Noise app and personalised hearing profile options. https://www.gadgets360.com/wearables/news/airpods-4-pro-launch-sale-date-specifications-features-6527644

Apple Intelligence has been released at Apple's 'Glowtime' event on September 9, 2024. This page is currently being updated as new information is released, but the key details so far are: Apple Intelligence is coming to all new iPhone 16s. Writing Tools, for rewriting emails. Make Genmojis from prompts. Image Playground, the image generating app integrated into apps like Messages. Relive Moments for finding photos and videos you've taken and can't remember where. Survey your inbox in Mail through a summary of each email. A more natural, contextually relevant and personal Siri. Unveiled at WWDC 2024, Apple Intelligence marks a push by the Cupertino company into the world of AI, specifically generative AI. Despite rumors that not all of the features Apple announced at the event will launch with the iPhone 16 this year, Apple is still pushing ahead with a release in fall 2024 and the current beta versions seem to confirm that Apple Intelligence is still very much on track, even if it won't be there at launch. With Apple Intelligence, Apple is exploring how AI can help people in their everyday lives, with a big focus on privacy. It will help you write emails, perform natural language search and create memory movies based on prompts, but unlike the approach from Google and Microsoft, there is no plan to charge for access to Apple Intelligence's better features. Recent rumors of a $20 monthly charge have been quashed and we don't think we'll see any changes on that front until at least 2027. So, for the lowdown on Apple Intelligence, and how it could influence our list of the best AI phones, read on. Apple Intelligence is Apple's multimodal, cross-platform approach to today's AI computing trend. It's coming to just about every Apple platform and most newer Apple devices. Apple Intelligence includes generative AI features, like writing and image creation, as well as an improved Siri assistant, and much more. Apple Intelligence takes a decidedly Apple-like approach to privacy, which means that the least information possible is shared with anyone, even Apple itself. Most Apple Intelligence features run on your device. When Apple needs to access the cloud for more power, it has a Power Cloud Compute standard to protect your data and privacy; in a nutshell that means cloud-power without data spreading between a load of servers and platforms. We mention privacy first because Apple mentioned privacy first, and no other AI company talks about your data privacy and how your data is being protected quite as much as Apple does. Apple is also giving Apple Intelligence unprecedented access to your data, and it will be able to read all of your messages, monitor your calendar, follow your Maps and location, record your phone calls, look at your photos, and understand any other personal data. Apple Intelligence will offer a new level of contextual features, because it will have access to just about all of your personal information. Apple Intelligence includes generative AI features, but it's a more robust platform than just a generative AI model, like ChatGPT. It will offer generative AI tools for writing and editing, image creation, and organization. It will also be able to offer summaries, just like current generative AI tools. Wherever you can type or input text, Apple Intelligence will offer suggestions to improve your writing. It will rewrite, proofread, and summarize text for you. Apple Intelligence will stay aware of your incoming Mail messages and your notifications, and it will try to prioritize what is important to you. A new Reduce Interruptions Focus mode uses Apple Intelligence to only offer high-priority messages that need your immediate attention. All your notifications can be summarized by Apple Intelligence, so instead of an email notification showing you a partial part of the email, which might not be that helpful, you'll get a nice little summary instead. Apple Intelligence will also summarize conversations and messages for you, and it can even summarize audio recordings. You'll be able to record phone calls and have Apple Intelligence summarize the conversation, or you can record in the Notes app and get a summary of the audio recording there. For image creation, Apple has a new Image Playground app and tool that is part of Apple Intelligence. With this, you can either enter your own prompt or use a suggested one, and the suggestions will be personalized based on what you're doing at the time. So for example if you message a friend about hiking in a forest, then 'forest' might be one of the prompts. Apple Intelligence includes generative AI features, but it's a more robust platform than just a generative AI model, like ChatGPT. It will offer generative AI tools for writing and editing, image creation, and organization. It will also be able to offer summaries, just like current generative AI tools. Wherever you can type or input text, Apple Intelligence will offer suggestions to improve your writing. It will rewrite, proofread, and summarize text for you. Apple Intelligence will stay aware of your incoming Mail messages and your notifications, and it will try to prioritize what is important to you. A new Reduce Interruptions Focus mode uses Apple Intelligence to only offer high-priority messages that need your immediate attention. All your notifications can be summarized by Apple Intelligence, so instead of an email notification showing you a partial part of the email, which might not be that helpful, you'll get a nice little summary instead. Apple Intelligence will also summarize conversations and messages for you, and it can even summarize audio recordings. You'll be able to record phone calls and have Apple Intelligence summarize the conversation, or you can record in the Notes app and get a summary of the audio recording there. For image creation, Apple has a new Image Playground app and tool that is part of Apple Intelligence. With this, you can either enter your own prompt or use a suggested one, and the suggestions will be personalized based on what you're doing at the time. So for example if you message a friend about hiking in a forest, then 'forest' might be one of the prompts. Apple is applying its generative AI tools to photos as well, but not as strongly as most competitors. There is a Magic Eraser-style tool called Photo Clean Up that removes unwanted objects in photos and replaces them with a natural background. Thanks to the iOS 18.1 beta 3 we know this tool will be in iOS 18.1 now, and we've seen it working. All you need to do is open a photo, then tap on Clean Up in the photo editor. Now tap, circle or brush over whatever part of the photo you'd like to remove with your finger, and let AI work its magic. If you do it on a person then it's as if they were never there. Otherwise, Apple is using Apple Intelligence to assist in searching photos and videos. You'll be able to search for a specific scene in a video, for instance. You can also search for a category of photos and Apple Intelligence will put together a video presentation that fits your search. It will include photos and videos, as well as background music it selects. Apple Intelligence is available now for developers via beta versions. If you are an Apple developer, the latest macOS 15 Sequoia, iPadOS 18, and iOS 18 developer betas will have some Apple Intelligence features. In fact, Apple just launched the last developer beta before the final release, at least according to a well-connected reporter. If you are signed up for Apple's public beta program, Apple says Apple Intelligence will be available in the public beta for those platforms as well, though it is unlikely the beta will have every feature, or that every feature will work completely. Now that we know there's a September 9 launch event, we can start to see how the release of Apple Intelligence will roll out. iOS 18.0, which will be on the iPhone 16 when it launches, will have no Apple Intelligence features at all. This might come as a shock to many, but it won't be long before iOS 18.1 is released, possibly in October. On the last Apple earnings call Tim Cook said, "by the end of the calendar year.” iOS 18.1 still won't contain the main Siri upgrades. For that you'll have to wait until early 2025, when we can expect the last of the announced Apple Intelligence features, like the ChatGPT integration, to launch. But what about macOS? For macOS Sequoia, we will follow the progress of the beta software and it is likely that the final version of the platform will be available around the same time as iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1, in October, 2024. Of course Siri is getting a massive upgrade thanks to Apple Intelligence. Siri is no longer just a virtual balloon that sits at the bottom of your phone screen. Now, when you activate Siri, your entire home screen will ripple, to show that Siri has completely taken over. Siri is getting better all around. It will have "richer language-understanding capabilities," according to Apple. It will be more natural, and more contextually relevant. When you start a conversation with Siri, it will remember what you were talking about when you make your next request, so you won't have to start over every time. Also, Siri will finally accept typing instead of just speech. If you never use Siri, it may surprise you to learn you couldn't type to Siri, but it's true. Now you can use the keyboard to give Siri commands and queries. Siri is going to do a better job explaining how to use your device. Whether you use an iPhone, iPad, or a Mac computer, Siri will be able to answer thousands more questions about how to do things on your Apple product. Siri will also know what is happening on screen, and it will make suggestions based on what it sees. Apple Intelligence is a major upgrade for Siri that will enable far more third-party actions. Using Apple's new App Intent API, app developers will be able to program commands that you can use with Siri. Siri will also know you. It will know much more of the information you have on your device. You'll be able to ask Siri to "play that song Edgar mentioned" and it will know because it read your iMessage conversation with Edgar. If you ask "when is Dad landing at Laguardia" it will look up his flight details from the message he sent and give you real-time tracking info. That's cool, but it's a lot more than we're used to a computer knowing about us. Based on the current betas Apple are releasing it looks like iOS 18.2 will finally deliver the Siri we've been waiting for. Apple started its presentation on Apple Intelligence by talking about privacy, and it was clear throughout the WWDC 2024 keynote that privacy is a huge concern. Privacy will be a key feature that sets Apple's AI apart from the competition, at least for now. Apple is running everything on your device. While Siri may know everything you said in your text messages, it won't be sharing that information with anyone, not Apple or anyone else. At least, according to Apple. When you create an image in the Image Playground, Apple doesn't know what image you've created. Even if your iPhone 15 Pro needs some help from the cloud when it summarizes the last phone call you made, it won't report anything to Apple. Apple is keeping more complex cloud requests locked in a Private Cloud Compute environment, which 'cryptographically ensures that iPhone, iPad, and Mac do not talk to a server unless its software has been publicly logged for inspection,' according to the Apple Intelligence news release. Apple Intelligence will offer free access to ChatGPT, in some way. We know that there will be a direct link to ChatGPT so that Apple owners can use ChatGPT to understand documents and images. We also know that Siri will be able to route a request through ChatGPT, if you ask nicely. Apple is adding a level of privacy to these ChatGPT requests. According to Apple, when you access ChatGPT through Apple Intelligence, your IP address is obscured, and OpenAi won't store your request. Otherwise, ChatGPT's data-use policies apply. ChatGPT is coming to all three major platforms – macOS Sequoia, iPadOS 18, and iOS 18 – later this year, powered by GPT-4. However, Apple has also said that other AI models will become partners in the future as well. ChatGPT may not be the exclusive large-language model (LLM) partner for Apple Intelligence for long, if ever. Apple Intelligence includes features across almost every Apple platform, including macOS 15 Sequoia, iOS 18, and iPadOS 18. Unfortunately, not every device that can run those operating systems will be able to use Apple Intelligence features. Apple says Apple Intelligence is coming to devices that use the Apple M1, M2, M3, and M4 chips, as well as the A17 Pro chipset. That means even devices you can buy brand new today will not get the features later this year. The current iPad Pro and iPad Air devices, as well as previous iPad devices that used the M1 and M2 chips, will all be supported. The base model iPad 10.9 and the iPad mini will not be supported, as they use older Apple Bionic chips. The only iPhone models that will work with Apple Intelligence are the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus use the A16 Bionic chipset, and not the A17 Pro chips. If you have a Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, iMac, Mac Studio or Mac mini with an M1 chip or newer inside, you should be fine. Apple computers with an Intel processor on board will likely not be supported. https://techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/apple-intelligence-explained

AMD's bleeding-edge Instinct MI300A data center APU has been tested in Geekbench 6.3.0. Discovered by BenchLeaks on X, the pair of MI33A APUs performed seemingly worse than a Core i5-14600K across three runs. The APU showed up as "AMD Proto Sample: SH5-MI300A-A0," somewhat implying that it could be a prototype sample. According to the submissions, the MI300A was tested on a platform called "AMD Corporation Eviden2p," consisting of a dual-socket design. Therefore, the system had 48 cores and 96 threads, as each MI300A wields 24 Zen 4 execution cores. The MI300A operated at 3.7 GHz, the rated CPU peak clock speed for the data center APU. The MI300A scored 1,798 points in the single-core benchmark and 13,888 points in the multi-core test for the first run. The second run saw scores of 1,938 and 14,694 points. The third run saw scores of 1,992 and 15,085 points, respectively. Those familiar with Geekbench 6 scores will immediately know how horrible all three benchmark runs are for a chip on the scope and scale of the MI300A. By comparison, Intel's mid-range Core i5-14600K desktop CPU outperforms the MI300A in the same test. The 14600K features a single-core score of 2,806 points and a multi-core score of 15,977 points in Geekbench 6, surpassing the MI300A by a whopping 47% in single-core and 9% in multi-core. Also armed with 24 Zen 4 cores, the Ryzen Threadripper 7960X was seemingly faster than the MI300A. In Geekbench 6, the Ryzen Threadripper 7960X is well ahead of the MI300A, featuring an average single-threaded score of 3,050 points and an average multi-core score in the 25,000-point range based on test results in the Geekbench browser. The result was to be expected in a way since the Ryzen Threadripper 7960X has a faster base (4.2 GHz) and boost clock (5.3 GHz) than the MI300A. Given the abysmal results, it's clear that the MI300A wasn't performing to its full potential. We wouldn't be surprised if the chip is not supported correctly on Geekbench 6 or if the cooling could have limited the MI300A. Remember that the MI300A has a peak TDP of 760W. The MI300A is AMD's flagship APU for the data center; the chip's primary competition is Nvidia's Grace Hopper Superchip, which is currently one of the fastest data center chips in the world. Geekbench 6 targets desktops, laptops, and smartphones. Benchmarking a data center chip with Geekbench 6 is pointless since specialized workloads exist. Nonetheless, sometimes, it's amusing to see how exotic CPUs perform on ordinary benchmarks. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-instinct-mi300a-data-center-apu-underperforms-against-mainstream-cpus-in-geekbench-mi300a-submissions-show-lower-performance-than-a-core-i5-14600k

(Web Desk) - A man suspected of going on a three-hour shooting spree in California pleaded not guilty to animal cruelty and other charges. His shooting rampage killed 81 animals including miniature horses, goats and chickens. Vicente Arroyo, 39, made his first court appearance Thursday after Monterey County Sheriff deputies arrested him earlier in the week for allegedly using several weapons to shoot the animals being housed in pens and cages on a lot in the small community of Prunedale. The animal owners do not want to be identified or speak with the media, Monterey County Sheriff Commander Andres Rosas told The Associated Press Friday. “I went out there, and it was a pretty traumatic scene. These were people’s pets,” he said. One of the miniature horses belonged to the owner of the lot where the animals were housed, and the other 80 belonged to someone who rented the land to house their pets, Rosas said. According to court records, Arroyo was charged with killing 14 goats, nine chickens, seven ducks, five rabbits, a guinea pig and 33 parakeets and cockatiels. Arroyo is also charged with killing a pony named Lucky and two miniature horses named Estrella and Princessa. Some animals survived the shooting that lasted several hours but had to be euthanized because of the severity of their injuries, Rosas said. Rosas said Arroyo lived in a camper in a vineyard next to the lot where the animals were kept and that a motive is not yet known. His attorney, William Pernik, said that after talking to Arroyo and his family he became concerned about his client’s mental competency and asked the judge for a mental health evaluation. “We’re dealing with an individual who has very serious charges and who does not appear to be in the right state of mind to understand the proceedings against him,” Pernik said. Pernik said that Arroyo’s family had reached out to various country agencies to get help for him but that “unfortunately, he did not receive that mental health help in time before this tragic incident.” The judge ordered Arroyo, who is being held on a $1 million bail, to undergo a mental evaluation. The court will get an update on Arroyo’s mental status in two weeks, Pernik said. Authorities received multiple 911 calls around 3:25 a.m. Tuesday reporting shots being fired in Prunedale, an incorporated community about 8 miles (13 kilometers) from the city of Salinas, he said. Deputies who arrived on the scene could hear shots being fired, and a shelter-in-place was ordered for a five-mile radius. Monterey County S.W.A.T. members were sent in, and the sheriff’s office also requested drone assistance from the nearby Seaside Fire Department and Gonzales Police Department, Rosas said. Officers in an armored vehicle arrested Arroyo without incident, he said. https://dunyanews.tv/en/WeirdNews/835969-us-citizen-kills-81-animals-in-threehour-shooting-spree

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s dire recent performances in international cricket have sparked debate over the invasion of politics in sport, with claims nepotism at the top is sabotaging success on the field. Pakistan last week fell to eighth, their worst Test ranking in nearly six decades, after a shock 2-0 home series defeat to Bangladesh. It was the 10th winless home Test in a row for the cricket-crazy country and came after humiliating early exits from both the 50-over and T20 World Cups in the past year. The current Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman is Mohsin Naqvi, who has a second full-time job as interior minister in a nation grappling with a surge in militant attacks. In the past two years Pakistan cricket has plowed through four coaches, three board heads, three captains and numerous formats of the domestic competition — instability experts say rides on the whims of politicians. “This has a knock-on effect on team performance,” said cricket journalist and former PCB media manager Ahsan Iftikhar Nagi. “When we have chaos and chronic instability within the management of the board it will reflect on-field performances,” he told AFP. Cricket is by far Pakistan’s most po[CENSORED]r sport with players celebrated as national heroes, endorsed by top brands and streets emptied during major events. The sport cuts across all divides in society, giving the game enormous cultural and political cachet in the nation of over 240 million. Former prime minister Imran Khan launched his political career off his success as an international player, after captaining the team to victory in the 1992 ODI World Cup. He served as prime minister from 2018 to 2022 but is currently jailed on charges he claims were manufactured to prevent him contesting elections earlier this year. This week he issued a statement from jail recording a litany of complaints about his detention and describing the ills of cricket as a result of the same political machinations he says are hindering him. “Favourites have been imposed to run a technical sport like cricket. What are Mohsin Naqvi’s qualifications?” he asked, claiming Naqvi had “annihilated” the team. “Nations are destroyed when corrupt and incompetent people are placed into positions of power in state institutions,” he claimed. Nepotism and patronage are endemic in Pakistan. Khan campaigned on an anti-corruption ticket but then rose to power with the help of the powerful military establishment, analysts say. The national team’s downward spiral also overlapped with the former superstar’s time in office, when he selected his own favored PCB chief and intervened in the game’s domestic format as well. Najam Sethi, a journalist selected three times to run the PCB, said the role had become a “sinecure” designed to burnish reputations. “Generals, judges and bureaucrats, just for a love of the game — but no knowledge of the game — have been appointed,” he said. “Also, the cricketers with knowledge of the game but no managerial experience have been appointed.” Pakistan’s last major triumph was the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy. They have not won a Test match at home since February 2021. Their last notable performance saw them reach the T20 World Cup final in 2022. However, in the 2024 event they exited in the first round after shock losses to the United States and Ireland. The defeat to Bangladesh has seen Naqvi — and the system installing him — come under increased scrutiny in parliament and in the press, with calls for his resignation. “Since 1998, hand-picked favorites of the respective ruling regimes in the country have taken turns as PCB chairmen to run the game in their own clueless manner, only to ruin it,” the Express Tribune said. “They are busy working on their own respective agendas, which primarily relate to saving their own skin and seat, or making good money at the expense of the country’s cricket.” The incongruity of Naqvi’s twin appointments was highlighted when he hosted a recent press conference discussing both a mass-casualty militant attack and the game of cricket. Rana Sanaullah Khan, a close aide to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, appeared this week to hint support for the PCB chief was waning at the top. “It is his choice” whether to continue, he told local news channel ARY. “These two jobs are full-time roles.” https://www.arabnews.pk/node/2570641/pakistan

Low-carb diets can meet and sometimes even exceed one’s nutrient needs, according to a study that examined the scepticism around the nutritional quality of such diets. Commonly recommended for diabetic patients to manage their sugar levels, low-carb diets restrict the intake of foods high in carbohydrates or added sugar, including sweets, starches, and refined grains. While low-carb diets have been shown to provide health benefits, including weight loss, researchers said scepticism remains around the nutritional quality of low-carb diets. Some argue that cutting down on carbs leads to over-consuming protein or fat and under-consuming essential nutrients, the team, including researchers at the University of Vermont, US, said. For the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition, they assessed the nutrient adequacy of three different seven-day low-carb meal plans. Two were ketogenic diets – – one that averaged about 20 grams of net carbs per day, while the other averaged about 40 “All three low-carbohydrate meal plans exceeded recommendations (US) for vitamins A, C, D, E, K, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B6, folate and B12 in males and females in the age group of 31-70 years and exceeded calcium recommendations for adults in the age group of 31-50 years,” the authors wrote. “Our findings suggest that, in addition to their well-established ability to support weight management, low-carb eating patterns can actually help promote better diet quality and close critical nutrient gaps,” co-author Beth Bradley, from the University of Vermont, said. For certain sub-section of the po[CENSORED]tion — such as younger women requiring higher amounts of iron or older people needing more calcium — the low-carb meal plans fall slightly short in a few nutrients, the researchers said. Further, they found that two of three meal plans in the study — those containing 40 grams and 100 grams of net carbohydrates, respectively — also provided more than enough fibre for women aged 31-70 years. grams of net carbs per day. The third was a more liberal meal plan that contained an average of around 100 grams of net carbs per day.'\ While some low-carb diets are known to be also low on fibre, the researchers said the results do not support the idea. “The idea that a low-carb diet must also be low in fibre is simply not supported by the data. High-fibre foods are actually an important part of a low-carb lifestyle, in part because fibre-rich food choices can help lower net carbohydrate intake,” Bradley explained. “Non-starchy vegetables, nuts and seeds, and, in moderation, even higher-carb fruits, starchy vegetables and whole grains can contribute fibre to the diet while keeping overall net carb intake in check, especially in the more liberal low-carb approach,” the co-author said. While some low-carb diets are known to be also low on fibre, the researchers said the results do not support the idea. “The idea that a low-carb diet must also be low in fibre is simply not supported by the data. High-fibre foods are actually an important part of a low-carb lifestyle, in part because fibre-rich food choices can help lower net carbohydrate intake,” Bradley explained. “Non-starchy vegetables, nuts and seeds, and, in moderation, even higher-carb fruits, starchy vegetables and whole grains can contribute fibre to the diet while keeping overall net carb intake in check, especially in the more liberal low-carb approach,” the co-author said. https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/food-wine/low-carb-diets-meet-nutrient-needs-study-9557836/

Donald Trump pledged on Saturday to make it too costly for countries to shift away from using the US dollar, adding a new pillar to his tariff platform. “You leave the dollar and you’re not doing business with the United States because we are going to put a 100 per cent tariff on your goods,” the Republican presidential nominee said at a rally in the battleground state of Wisconsin. The statement follows months of discussions between Trump and his economic advisers on ways to penalise allies or adversaries who seek active ways to engage in bilateral trade in currencies other than the dollar. Options have included export controls, currency mani[CENSORED]tion charges and tariffs, people familiar with the matter have previously told Bloomberg News. Trump, who has long embraced protectionist trade policies, said the dollar has been “under major siege” for eight years. China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa discussed de-dollarisation at a summit last year. By contrast, Trump has said he wants the dollar to remain the world’s reserve currency, a pledge he renewed at Saturday’s rally.While dollar dominance has lessened in recent decades, the US currency still accounted for 59 per cent of official foreign-exchange reserves in the first quarter of 2024, with the euro second at almost 20 per cent, according to the International Monetary Fund. Wisconsin is one of the most critical swing states in the race between Trump and Democratic rival Kamala Harris. The two are fighting for the support of the state’s working-class voters, uneasy with President Joe Biden’s economic agenda and drawn to Trump’s populist appeals. A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll released last week showed Harris leading in Wisconsin by 8 percentage points, the largest lead over Trump she has among the seven battleground states in the poll. Trump’s Wisconsin rally caps off a campaign swing that included Pennsylvania and North Carolina, as well as a stop in his hometown of New York City where he delivered an economy-focused address and held a press conference. Harris spent Saturday in Pennsylvania preparing for a Tuesday debate with Trump, the next big test that could change the course of the close race. https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/us-elections-trump-pledges-100-tariff-for-countries-that-shun-dollar-124090800060_1.html

For Wild Bastards, the sequel to the 2019 first person roguelike, Void Bastards, developer Blue Manchu pretty quickly homed in on a wild west team-up, Magnificent Seven sort of deal. But there was a problem. "In first person games, it's really hard to do a gang well, like AI teammates, even after 20 or 30 years of work on it, they're still really annoying most of the time, and we wanted to make a singleplayer game," explained Jonathan Chey, design director at Wild Bastards developer Blue Manchu and a veteran of Irrational Games and Looking Glass. "We had this problem, which is we want a group of people working together, but don't want to have the AI controlling your teammates. How are we going to do that? That's when we really focused on the swapping mechanic."Wild Bastards lets you swap between two of its 13 different heroes on any given level of its roguelike campaign. It's as quick and seamless as switching weapons in any other FPS, but you're also juggling separate health pools, buffs, movement options, and special abilities. In action, it feels like if Overwatch let you swap between two of its heroes on the fly, with all the chaos and emergent possibility that entails. If Void Bastards was more a game about avoiding or improvising your way out of combat, taking a page from the likes of Thief and System Shock, Wild Bastards is all about the power fantasy offered by this smorgasbord of special abilities, and how you combo them together. "It's kind of like when we were developing Bioshock. We call it the one-two punch, because in Bioshock you had your left hand power and your right hand gun," Chey said. "One super-effective early strategy you can use is to zap people with lightning, which stuns them, and then you shoot them. "That kind of strategy is possible in Wild Bastards too, because you can flick between the characters rapidly." Some of the possibilities Chey and his colleague, Blue Manchu creative director Ben Lee, outlined include: Setting enemies on fire with burning man Smoky, then swapping to a more direct damage dealer. Using a high-mobility hero to grab a vantage point for slow moving sniper, The Judge. Firing off an AOE stun with lasso snake Hopalong's ultimate, then cleaning up with headshots from The Judge. Pairing arachnid gunslinger Spider Rosa's decoy special ability with pretty much anything else⁠—Lee called this "one of [his] most abused and lent-on" abilities. Their focus, notably, was always on combos of two different characters⁠—Chey and Lee were clear that this isn't a game where you want to "main" just one character, and their different functions will have a bit of a rock paper scissors thing going with Wild Bastards' varied enemy types. "There is no best outlaw," Lee said. "There'll be an outlaw that's really good, maybe for four fights in a row, then you'll hit an enemy type that they're not suited to. If you don't have another outlaw partnered up that can compensate for their weakness, you probably lose the showdown." With that in mind, Lee and Chey were keen to defend a character who proved slightly contentious in previews and demo feedback: Hopalong, a snake-person with a lasso who specializes in hard crowd control on single targets. "I watched a video preview of the game and they were basically saying 'I don't get why they made this character, he's so shit, what's the point of this character? This is a failed experiment,'" Chey recalled. "I'm just like, you need to play some more, because he could very well be the most powerful character in the game." "Hopalong seems really weak, and if you're fighting very swarmy types of enemy, then yeah, you're going to be in trouble," Lee added. "But if you're fighting single, very strong, heavily-armored, big, deadly, monster-type characters, he pretty much just cancels them⁠—he's so effective at killing one thing that he's the correct choice." On the opposite end of the roster, there's Sarge, a bipedal horse cyborg with a lever rifle whose visual design piqued my interest, but it turns out he's actually one of the more "vanilla" options mechanically. The way Lee and Chey described him, Sarge sounds like your classic Soldier 76/Roland from Borderlands type, except perhaps a bit tankier. Sarge pairs an energy shield ability with a mid-to-long range battle rifle-style weapon. "He's kind of a late game all-rounder," Chey explained. "I would say Sarge and Spider Rosa are the two classic all-rounders in the team. He's a bit longer range and lower rate of fire than Spider Rosa. "It seems kind of weird to describe the robotic horse man as less odd, but it's all relative. Nobody is not odd. That's the linchpin of the character designs: They're all weirdos." "That's at the narrative core [of Wild Bastards]," explained Lee. "You might have noticed that none of the Wild Bastards are humans, and that's because they're all being ostracized or hunted or exploited by humans." It's all a far cry from the randomized, anonymous, doomed convicts of Void Bastards, and we don't have long to wait until we can see how it all plays out. Wild Bastards will release on September 12, and you can wishlist it on Steam. https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/wild-bastards-is-channeling-its-creators-previous-work-on-bioshock-with-its-powers-and-combos-and-even-its-most-normal-all-rounder-character-is-a-cyborg-horse-with-a-lever-rifle/

Apple Watch Series 10 — or Watch X — may be unveiled at the “It's Glowtime” Apple event on September 9. Details about the Apple Watch Series 9 successor have surfaced online over the past few weeks, suggesting several key features and upgrades it may arrive with. A new report claims the watch will likely come with bigger display sizes than the existing 41mm and 45mm options. It is tipped to get an updated heart rate sensor and improved water resistance. Apple Watch Series 10 Features (Expected) The Apple Watch Series 10 may get an updated ECG or heart rate sensor, which will likely offer more accurate results and unlock newer features, according to a 9to5Mac report. An earlier leak suggested that the watch could support sleep apnea detection. The new report adds that the process of health data collection may also see an update. For instance, new algorithms in the iPhone Health app may read data collected by the heart rate sensor to help detect atrial fibrillation instead of the data being processed in the watch itself. The current Apple Watch Series 9 comes with a water resistance rating of 50 meters but is not suitable for water sports or adventures like scuba diving. The Apple Watch Ultra, however, has up to 100 meters of water resistance and is suited for high-speed water sports up to 40 meters deep. Reportedly, the Apple Watch Series 10 will be suitable for high-speed water sports up to 20 meters deep. The upcoming smartwatch is also tipped to get support for Apple's Depth app, which is presently exclusive to the Watch Ultra. The report added that the Apple Watch Series 10 may be available in 44mm and 48mm size options. The Apple Watch Series 9 is currently offered in 41mm and 45mm variants. With newer displays, the watches are tipped to get new watch faces.One of the new watch faces is expected to be "Reflections," a watch face that reacts to ambient light, while another will likely be a new Hermès watch face called “Regatta.” The latter was reportedly inspired by the sailing sports competition of the same name. It may allow users to access a timer directly. https://www.gadgets360.com/wearables/news/apple-watch-series-10-new-ecg-sensor-watch-faces-water-resistance-report-6506408

Apple is about to launch the brand new iPhone 16 at its “Glowtime” event on September 9, and it’s made me wonder what it could do to win me back. When the Google Pixel 9 range came out I switched to a Google Pixel 9 Pro. Having been an iPhone user all my life I was nervous about dipping my toes in the Android waters, but I can report that the temperature is lovely, come on in! Full disclaimer: my previous iPhone was pretty old, so it was long overdue an upgrade, meaning that the bar was set very low, but thankfully the Pixel 9 Pro easily cleared it, and then some. To be honest, after reading our Pixel 9 Pro review, I was just curious to find out what a Google Pixel phone would be like, and it became readily apparent that for everyday use, there’s very little that separates a Google Pixel 9 from a new iPhone. Sure, they use different hardware, the haptic feedback is slightly different, and have different camera specs, but for everyday use, it’s the experience of using the phone that matters most. Once you understand that you’re using the Play Store to download apps, not the App Store, life kind of carries on as normal for an ex-iPhone user. Pixel phones have face recognition for unlocking the phone, so there's no change there for an iPhone user, but they also fingerprint recognition when it needs more security for payments. All the apps I used on my iPhone, like Facebook, Threads, X, Instagram, Slack, Gmail, YouTube, etc, are available on the Pixel 9 Pro, and they all work in exactly the same way. The basic gestures for using the phone are similar enough, and my AirPods Pro work with an Android phone just fine. I can even keep my Apple Music subscription and Google Pay works just like Apple Pay in shops. Even my banking apps look and feel the same.There is one area where Google and Apple have the chance to differentiate themselves however, and that’s with artificial intelligence. Google has beaten Apple to the punch by getting its AI assistant, called Gemini, to market first, but at the moment I’d describe the Gemini execution as somewhat clunky. You can tell your Pixel 9 to use Gemini instead of Google Assistant, but there are still some things that Gemini can’t do, so it pulls in help from Google Assistant anyway, and it sometimes feels like they’re fighting each other for ownership of the phone. When I say “Hey Google, launch Gemini”, Google Assistant tells me it can’t find Gemini on the phone and then starts to tell me about the Project Gemini spaceflight missions! The only way to get to Gemini Live (the part where you talk to your phone and it talks back to you like a human) is by launching Gemini and then touching the Gemini Live button on the phone. It feels counterintuitive to have to touch the phone to get to the part where you talk to the phone... But the lack of deep integration goes further - you can’t start timers from inside Gemini Live right now, for instance, and a lot of the features that Google showed off at the launch event, like searching in your Gmail inbox using Gemini Live, require extensions that haven’t launched yet. Basically, a lot of Gemini Live is ‘coming soon’. Plus, you have to pay for it. You get a year's free trial with a new Pixel 9 phone, but after the year is up it’s going to cost you $20 a month (£18.99, AU$30) to be a Gemini Advanced subscriber via a Google One AI Premium Plan, which does come with some nice extras, like 2TB of storage space. So, it looks like Apple has a chance to use Apple Intelligence to better Gemini when it launches the iPhone 16 range. Unfortunately, it’s not like Apple is about to knock Gemini out of the park with Apple Intelligence. At launch, it’s looking like the iPhone 16 lineup, which comes with iOS 18, won’t have any Apple Intelligence features at all. We have to wait for them to arrive in iOS 18.1 when it launches in October (hopefully), then we have to wait until early 2025 for the full Siri 2.0 experience. It used to be the case that I’d compare phones in two ways, firstly on specs like processor, memory, and camera, but then consider the operating system and apps, and how they would fit in with my current workflow. These days I’m finding the line between iOS and Android operating systems has blurred enough that they feel interchangeable, so now it’s down to who nails AI. There is one exception to the spec comparison though, and that’s RAM. RAM is integral to how well AI performs on a smartphone, so I’ll be interested to see how much RAM Apple packs into the iPhone 16 range on September 9, and then we’ll know if Apple can win me back. https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/i-switched-to-a-pixel-9-heres-what-the-iphone-16-needs-to-do-to-win-me-back-and-its-not-what-you-think

Prominent hardware leaker momomo_us just posted on X (formerly Twitter) the prices of the upcoming X870 and X870E motherboards from Asus. With the launch of the 800-series AMD chipsets just around the corner, with some speculating that it will happen on September 30, distributors and retailers likely already know how much these boards will cost. However, it seems that momomo_us discovered the prices on an overseas retailer — likely from Europe — as the prices are set in Euros. We’ve already seen the specifications of nine new Asus X870 motherboards, so these are the expected prices for some of these boards. They also shared the list’s expected launch price of a Gigabyte X870 motherboard. We estimated the U.S. dollar prices from the Euro value using the current exchange rate of €1 to $1.10 and saw substantial increases in the expected launch prices of these new motherboards. The leaker didn’t specify whether the prices include VAT (value-added tax). Remember that hardware is usually more expensive outside the U.S. market, with some countries slapping VAT as high as 20% on hardware. The top-end Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero had a launch price of nearly $650. However, the X870E version of this mobo would now retail for $781.28. Even the more affordable Asus Prime X670-P, retailing for $299, jumps by about $50 for the X870 version, assuming that these numbers are accurate. This price increase is the opposite of what happened to the Ryzen 9000 chips that these motherboards will support. The latest AMD processors had a lower launch price than their Ryzen 7000 predecessors, while the X870 motherboards may retail for higher prices, assuming the leaked pricing isn’t just a placeholder. However, this increase in retail prices will follow the trend with Intel’s Arrow Lake chips, which will also appear to have higher launch prices, provided that the numbers we saw are accurate. With the launch of the X870 chipsets expected to arrive this month, we only have to wait a few more weeks to know their actual launch prices. At the very least, these leaked numbers will give us a ballpark figure on what to prepare if we want to upgrade our motherboards and get the most out of AMD’s Ryzen 9000 processors. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/motherboards/amd-x870-motherboards-listed-overseas-starting-at-dollar350-premium-models-may-retail-close-to-dollar800

SAN FRANCISCO: A man suspected of going on a three-hour shooting rampage in Northern California and killing 81 animals, including miniature horses, goats and chickens, pleaded not guilty to animal cruelty and other charges. Vicente Arroyo, 39, made his first court appearance Thursday after Monterey County Sheriff deputies arrested him earlier in the week for allegedly using several weapons to shoot the animals being housed in pens and cages on a lot in the small community of Prunedale. The animal owners do not want to be identified or speak with the media, Monterey County Sheriff Commander Andres Rosas told media. https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1228139-man-in-california-charged-with-killing-81-animals

ISLAMABAD: As the prime minister’s directives to revive departmental sports is yet to see any practical implementation, the slow-moving Ministry for Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) Friday organised a conference to determine what has gone wrong that hindered these bodies from reviving their teams which used to participate in all major national sports events. Baring the armed forces, busy with Defence Day activities, the majority of departmental representatives participated in this hurriedly-organised conference that was first convened at the Gun & Country Club and later was shifted to a local hotel. The main objective of the session was to see why the departments have failed to revive their teams, especially in major team sports, including football, hockey, cricket and volleyball, despite the PM’s clear directives. And as to why no specific budget has been earmarked for the sports activities. The leading departments including forces and Wapda have always maintained their interest in developing sports teams despite the PTI government’s decision to disband departmental teams. Others including Sui Southern and Northern gas companies, the majority of banks including National Bank, Habib Bank, and a host of other departments wasted no time stopping sports activities in all major team/individual sports. May it be football or national sport hockey, these departments are yet to restore sports teams. So much so that footballers who had been hired by the SNGPL and other departments have been waiting for their salaries for months now. Civil Aviation Authority, PIA, ZTBL, PTV, SSGC, and SNGPL all have put curtains on football teams’ activities. Even the PM’s directives fell on deaf ears. The same is the case in hockey where all these departments did not move an inch since the PM issued directives in 2022 during his first tenure in office. “Not a single department which disbanded its hockey activities during PTI government has restored hockey outfits or started hiring any player for their teams. Even those who were given contracts are no more with these departments. We have requested these departments time and again to send teams to the national events but to no avail. Even the other day we sent a letter to SNGPL, SSGC, National Bank, and other departments to send entries for the National Junior Hockey Championship scheduled to start in Rawalpindi from the third week of September. Let us see what they do this time,” a Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) official when contacted said. The toothless ministry and Pakistan Sports Board’s (PSB) officials have wasted almost two years to execute departmental sports’ revival plan. Not an inch of progress has so far been noticed. During the meeting, one of the bank representatives said that recently they hired two hockey players, no PSB and ministry official dared to ask them whether before hiring, credentials of these players were checked with the PHF. ‘The News’ has also learnt that a few appointments of near and dear ones were made disguising them as players of one game or the other. Unless and until that particular game’s federation rates these players as a future asset, hiring these is only meant to appease their near and dear ones. Among other essential things required for the restoration of departmental sports, there is need for a set budget for sports activities. Proper hiring and promotion of players/officials should also be made part of the contract to be offered to a genuine talent fully approved by the respective federation. https://thenews.com.pk/print/1227726-no-headway-made-in-reviving-dept-sports-despite-pm-s-directives

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seem to be in a crisis once again amid the Duchess' struggles to launch a lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard. For the unversed, the former Suits actress announced her new business venture in March 2024 with a social media comeback. However, recently, she received sad news after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied permission to use American Riviera Orchard as the name of her brand. Not only that, Meghan suffered another setback as the same office raised serious concerns over how she styled the letter "O" of Orchard in the logo of her company. As reported by The Mail, the official document by USPTO reads, "Applicant must submit an amended description of the mark that agrees with the mark on the drawing." "The current description is inconsistent with the mark on the drawing and is thus inaccurate. Descriptions must be accurate and identify only those literal and design elements appearing in the mark." "In particular, the current mark description indicates that the letter 'O' appears in the mark. However, the letter is now clearly visible or highly stylized that it is unrecognizable as a letter." It is pertinent to mention that Meghan faced a fresh blow ahead of the Duke of Sussex's 40th birthday celebration. https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1227912-prince-harry-birthday-plans-ruined-as-meghan-markle-suffers-another-setback

New Delhi: Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic visit to Ukraine, India finds itself in a position to play peacemaker in the years-long Russia-Ukraine war. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval will be travelling to Moscow this week to hold crucial discussions in this regard. In July, PM Modi had also travelled to Russia on an official visit and held detailed discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin. India, because of its independent foreign policy, finds itself in a unique position to be able to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. With Europe and its western allies (NATO allies) finding themselves in a stalemate with Russia, backed by China, India, which has maintained friendly ties with most nations, opens a thrid axis in a largely bipolar world. "We (India) are not neutral. From the very beginning, we have taken sides. And we have chosen the side of peace. We have come from the land of Buddha where there is no place for war," PM Modi had said during his recent visit to Ukraine. In his talks with Mr Zelensky that took place under the shadow of the conflict, PM Modi said India is ever ready to play an "active role" in every effort to restore peace in Ukraine and he would even like to contribute personally in ending the conflict. Prime Minister Modi, who had already visited Russia earlier, followed up his Ukraine visit with a phone call to President Putin. "Spoke with President Putin today," he had written on social media site X on August 27, adding that the two leaders "Exchanged perspectives on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and my insights from the recent visit to Ukraine. Reiterated India's firm commitment to support an early, abiding and peaceful resolution of the conflict." Earlier, PM Modi's Office in the joint India-Ukraine statement said both leaders reiterated their readiness for further cooperation in upholding principles of international law, including the UN Charter. While Russia had described PM Modi's visit as "historic, game-changing", Ukraine too had called the Prime Minister's visit "historic", saying India is "key" in the global diplomatic efforts to end the war. The United States too, praised India's efforts, with President Biden saying, "I spoke with Prime Minister Modi to discuss his recent trip to Poland and Ukraine, and commended him for his message of peace and ongoing humanitarian support for Ukraine." National Security Adviser Ajit Doval's visit to Moscow comes days after PM Modi's visit to Kyiv where he spoke with President Zelenskyy, and subsequent phone calls with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US President Joe Biden. During the PM's phone call with President Putin, the leaders decided that Ajit Doval would visit Moscow for peace talks, sources said. No other details regarding the schedule of this visit is known yet. Speaking about the phone call, the Russian Embassy said, "Vladimir Putin shared his principled assessment of the destructive policies of the Kiev authorities and their Western patrons, and went on to highlight Russia's approaches to resolving this conflict." Sources also said that Mr Doval will be carrying PM Modi's peace plan which he will deliver to President Putin and discuss in detail with top Kremlin officials. President Putin's phone call with PM Modi and now a visit by Ajit Doval indicates that Russia is open to peace talks, signalling the end of the years-long war. President Putin had said earlier that, "We (Russia) seek negotiations based on agreed documents, not on fleeting demands (by Ukraine)." INDIA'S RISING ROLE IN GLOBAL DIPLOMACY Calling India a "Major geopolitical actor" in a recent interview to NDTV, former United Nations Security Council chief and ex-Singapore diplomat Kishore Mahbubani said, "How many leaders in the world can comfortably visit both Russia and Ukraine and be received warmly by both countries. Very few countriesItaian PM Georgia Meloni said on Saturday that India can help resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict. in the world. And the fact that Prime Minister Modi can do that is a sign of how India has arrived as a majorThe White House too described PM Modi's visits to Russia and then Ukraine as "potentially helpful." geopolitical actor."The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/for-russia-ukraine-war-to-end-narendra-modi-aims-for-vladimir-putin-volodymyr-zelenskyy-peace-deal-6516730

The Sims 4 is officially 10 years old as of this week. That's a huge milestone—it's the only game in the series to hit double digits and still receive content updates, lasting twice as long as both The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. Yet despite a record-breaking anniversary, it's hard to feel all giddy. Part of that is due to the fact that it's gone completely ignored by EA across its socials and news channels. Like, c'mon guys, not even a "10" graphic on your Twitter page or daft in-game t-shirt to celebrate? Nothing? But more so than that, it's an ever-growing sense of frustration with where the game is at right now. You'd think with all this time to cook, it would be the definitive simming experience. Yet instead of ageing like a fine wine, it's been leaving more of a sour milk taste in my mouth for longer than I'd care to admit. Yes, The Sims 4 has been alive and kickin' for a decade, but I think the game is all the worse for its long lifespan. There's a lotta packs these days I can't help but feel like, as the years have gone by, The Sims 4 has become increasingly oversaturated. While The Sims 3 squeezed out 11 expansion packs and nine stuff packs in four years, The Sims 4 currently has an eye-watering 79 packs in total: 12 expansion packs, 16 game packs, 20 stuff packs and 31 kits. That is, to be frank, an absurd amount. Of course a lot of it has come from kits, the $5 mini packs that EA introduced back in 2021. Almost all of them are simply cosmetic offerings bar Bust the Dust, the only gameplay-focused kit currently available. That's kind of whatever at this point, but there are still 48 additional packs available for the game, each with their own gameplay features that are actively working with (or against) every other moving part happening in the game. Now life sims are damn hard to make—there's a reason The Sims has gone relatively unchallenged in the space over the last 24 years—but I feel like the complexity of the genre is a consideration EA should be making as it continues to stuff hundreds and thousands of lines of code into The Sims 4. The game has long been accused of suffering from a bad case of spaghetti code. I can't speak to the truth of that, but I can speak to an increasingly buggy playing experience that has killed my desire to continue dedicating my time and money to a series that has been in my life since I was a child. An experience that is getting so bad EA had to specifically address it and tell folk it had "assembled a team" to deal with bug fixes. Which, shouldn't it have been doing that already? For me, my frustrations really started settling in when My Wedding Stories released in 2022—a game pack that was supposed to breathe new life into base game weddings, only to hopelessly break the entire system and then leave it unrepaired for the following two years. Now, EA has literally just released a laundry list of bug fixes that appears to have tackled the pack's most glaring problems. I haven't been able to verify for myself yet whether this fix has actually worked, but two years feels like too little too late. It's not the only $20 pack that has been left to rot over the years. 2016's Dine Out game pack still regularly causes issues for me—the process of seating customers, taking their orders and getting them out the door takes up hours of in-game time, with them often getting stuck and their behaviour freezing up. When these things cost so much damn money, it's hard to not be a little miffed by the whole thing. I don't even own every pack, yet I've easily spent hundreds of dollars across both PlayStation and PC despite regularly taking advantage of sales and bundle discounts. The complete Sims 4 experience is a hopelessly expensive undertaking, and I can't even begin to imagine how intimidating such a thing might be for someone looking to get into The Sims for the first time. The scariest part is, EA clearly isn't done trying to shove more $5/$20/$40 DLCs in our faces. It just revealed two kits and brand-new expansion Life and Death, and it seems like EA is fairly set on continuing to support The Sims 4 alongside Project Rene. I have to wonder how many more ideas it can possibly spin out into costly DLC while continuing to try and maintain the integrity of the code it's been weaving into the game for the last 10 years. Is there even a fix where everyone wins? But really, what's the solution here? Put The Sims 4 to rest, start all over again with a stripped-down base game with some easy-to-sell $40 packs like Seasons, Pets and University that we've become all too used to? As much as I would like to think we'd see a Sims 5 that included core features that we've spent the last 20 years having to pay for, I also know better than that. Folk can point to mods as an easy band-aid fix, but that actively ignores our fellow Simmers who enjoy playing the game on console. That's not to diminish the community effort—many aspects of the game are smoother thanks to the hard work of modders implementing bug fixes—but the onus shouldn't be on them to turn The Sims 4 into a more playable experience. Either way, it feels like a lose-lose situation. The Sims, as a complete package, is more expensive than ever. Setting aside hundreds of dollars and starting again seems like a friggin' nightmare. Ideally, support would've winded down around 30 goddamn packs ago, but we're far past that point now. I'm not quite sure where the stopping point is going to be for EA, but I'd be ecstatic if they straight-up stopped adding new packs and got to work on fixing what's already there. But bug fixes don't bring in money, and in a time where development is more expensive than ever, it's likely a hard thing to justify. I love The Sims—trust me, I really do, which is why I'm being so hard on it. It's a series that has given me hours of joy for the last 20 years of my life. Hell, The Sims 3 is the first videogame I distinctly remember saving my pocket money for, just to get the collector's edition with the plumbob USB drive. But if this is the modern Sims experience, I might have to say "dag dag" for good. https://www.pcgamer.com/games/life-sim/the-sims-4-is-now-a-decade-old-the-longest-running-game-in-the-series-and-its-age-is-seriously-showing/

The Nintendo Switch's successor will reportedly support backwards compatibility. A reliable games industry insider claimed earlier this week that the Switch 2 would play games released on the previous generation console. Nintendo confirmed earlier this year that the Switch 2 would be announced next year. The company has not yet provided any official details about the upcoming console or possible backwards compatibility support. Nintendo Switch 2 Backwards Compatibility The information comes from tipster Nate the Hate (as spotted by VGC), who has a track record of leaking accurate information about games and consoles. In a reply to a Reddit post about the Nintendo Switch 2, the tipster claimed: “It has backwards compatibility support.” The tipster's claim falls in line with earlier reports that said the Switch would arrive with backwards compatibility. A third-party Switch peripherals manufacturer had said back in April that the Nintendo Switch 2 would be backwards compatible with both physical and digital games. The latest Reddit post mentioned rumours about an update on the Switch 2 that may arrive in September. The Reddit post was based on industry analyst David Gibson's X post from Wednesday, that claimed the Nintendo Switch 2 was likely in production and an update on the upcoming console was expected this month. “No-one seems to have noticed the Nintendo assembler- Hosiden is spending ¥2bn on production equipment and ¥1bn on automation in FY3/25 for its major customer in amusement (Nintendo). I still expect Sept news and March 2025 release for next device,” Gibson said in his post. In May, Nintendo confirmed it would announce the Nintendo Switch successor during the financial year ending March 2025. The company also said it expected to sell 13.5 million Switch units in the current financial year. Nintendo has already announced new games for the Nintendo Switch as the iconic console enters its final lap. A new The Legend of Zelda title, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, is set launch on the Switch later this year.Last month, GamesIndustry.biz claimed that developers had been told not to expect the Nintendo Switch 2 to arrive in the current financial year. According to the report, developers were expecting the console to arrive in April or May 2025. https://www.gadgets360.com/games/news/nintendo-switch-2-backwards-compatibility-support-rumour-launch-2025-6506732

When OpenAI debuted SearchGPT, the demonstrations suggested everything about how people look for things online would immediately change forever. But, “wow” became “wow, that’s “embarrassing” when examples of the AI search engine at work proved somewhat flawed. The challenge to Google’s reign as search engine king is still undergoing revisions. According to a new piece in The Washington Post, SearchGPT is still wobbly on the facts. Google may not have to worry about losing its digital search throne any time soon, even as it moves at breakneck speed to implement its own AI search tools. The issues are not hard to understand. SearchGPT is supposed to meld OpenAI’s AI models with real-time web data for faster, more accurate answers. Questions and keywords return a summary of the requested information instead of the standard Google links. It can be fast and informative. Unfortunately for OpenAI, that initial error of fact is starting to look more like the rule than the exception. As the Post pointed out, early testers saw SearchGPT claim that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was speaking at a tech conference in the near future that he wasn’t actually scheduled to attend. That’s a hallucination just as bad as anything made up by ChatGPT. And even if SearchGPT were guaranteed to only state the truth, that’s not much of a salve when it has no way to answer your questions. Tests shared with the Post especially disparaged SearchGPT’s abilities to help out with local information. That information has to come from somewhere. Google’s decades of refined data on vast numbers of businesses and the products and services they provide make it a snap to find most of the information people might want about the places around them. And if there is anything it doesn’t already have in its databanks, its partners and subsidiaries can likely fill it in for them. SearchGPT and OpenAI have no such database access and so the responses are either nonsense or nothing. AI Search Parties OpenAI's prominence in the AI scene makes SearchGPT stand out, but the idea of mixing AI and search isn't exclusive. Google's aforementioned ambitions include AI Overviews and answers relayed by its Gemini AI assistant. Of course, Google's AI search tools have faced their own struggles, with occasionally bizarre and outright dangerous advice. Not that it stopped Google from going global with AI Overviews after some revision. OpenAI is still being cautious and has only released SearchGPT to a very limited number of users. Those eager to experience how generative AI models might transform online search have other options from well-funded startups trying other strategies. Perplexity AI is among the most prominent one. Rather than creating an AI model and then grafting it to a search engine system, Perplexity leverages existing models built by OpenAI, Anthropic, and other developers. Perplexity swerves around hallucinations with stricter guardrails and insisting on including links to back up what the AI writes, an innovation it was very early in adopting. Perplexity built its own web index while still using Google and Bing to fill in the gaps, while SearchGPT is apparently more reliant on external data. The result is a more structured approach that dodges some of the mistakes reportedly plaguing SearchGPT. Google's long-time approach to search doesn't look likely to face any formidable opponents for now, even from itself. No matter who is making an AI search engine, it will need to at least come close to Google's speed, precision, and accuracy to entice the Google-loving world. Considering the years and billions of dollars it took for Google to reach its current heights, OpenAI may need to be a little more patient or a lot more profligate in spending to do the same. And those resources will probably take more than just ChatGPT's subscriber base to achieve https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/if-you-think-searchgpt-is-ready-to-replace-google-youre-hallucinating-too

A U.S. grand jury has formally charged 52-year-old Michael Smith with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after allegedly buying AI-generated music, posting them on streaming platforms, and then using thousands of bots to stream his posts. This act allowed him to earn millions of dollars in royalties from 2017 through 2024. According to the unsealed indictment from the Justice Department, Mr. Smith claimed in February 2024 that his “existing music has generated at this point over 4 billion streams and $12 million in royalties since 2019.” This meant he made approximately $2.4 million annually by buying AI-generated tracks, uploading them on various streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music, and creating bots that allowed his tracks to gain millions of fake streams. With royalty payments often falling at less than one cent per stream, Mr. Smith likely garnered over 240 million streams yearly, most of them through bots. The music industry, in general, prohibits artificially boosting streams as it will negatively impact artists and musicians, where the money that the streaming company should pay them is funneled into accounts that use bots to increase the listening count of their tracks artificially. The act is similar to the payola scandal in the 1950s, where DJs and radio stations received money from publishers to give their songs more airtime, artificially inflating their po[CENSORED]rity to drive record and album sales. The only difference today is that radio stations have since been replaced by streaming platforms, DJs by user accounts, and artists by AI. Michael Smith’s acts were severe enough for the FBI to get involved during the investigation. Christie M. Curtis, the Acting Assistant Director in Charge of the New York FBI Field Office, said, “Michael Smith allegedly produced hundreds of thousands of songs with artificial intelligence and utilized automatic features to repeatedly stream the music to generate unlawful royalties to $10 million. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams also said, “Through his brazen fraud scheme, Smith stole millions in royalties that should have been paid to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders whose songs were legitimately streamed. Today, thanks to the work of the FBI and the career prosecutors of this Office, it’s time for Smith to face the music.” Smith was arrested last September 4, 2024, and now faces up to a maximum of 20 years imprisonment for each charge if found guilty. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/musician-charged-with-wire-fraud-after-using-thousands-of-bots-to-stream-ai-music-to-earn-millions-in-royalties

A California man has been arrested after his nighttime shooting spree left over 80 animals dead, sparking panic among residents. The incident occurred on Tuesday in Prunedale, a rural community roughly 100 miles south of San Francisco. The sheriff's office responded to reports of gunfire and issued a shelter-in-place order for residents within a five-mile radius, according to a report in NYT. The suspect, 39-year-old Vicente Joseph Arroyo of Salinas, was taken into custody after firing multiple weapons for over three hours in a vineyard. Law enforcement described the scene as extremely dark and heavily vegetated, making it challenging to locate the suspect immediately. Officers from several agencies eventually tracked down Arroyo and found his vehicle crashed along a vineyard road by dawn. He was arrested without resistance. A search of the area revealed a large cache of firearms, including rifles, shotguns, handguns and an illegal assault weapon. The authorities also found a stockpile of ammunition and bulletproof vests at the scene. Among the animals killed were miniature horses, goats, rabbits, chickens and various birds, according to Commander Andres Rosas of the Monterey County Sheriff's Office. Most animals were kept in pens on rented land adjacent to Arroyo's trailer. While some initially survived, many had to be euthanised due to severe injuries. Authorities confirmed the animals did not belong to Arroyo but were the property of a neighbouring landowner and a tenant who rented the land.Following his arrest, Arroyo was booked on multiple charges, including animal cruelty, wilful discharge of a firearm, illegal possession of an assault weapon and vandalism. His bail was Initially set at $50,000 (around ₹ 41.96 lakh) but was then raised to $1,000,000 (around ₹ 8.39 crore), stated a report in KTVU FOX 2. The report quoted Commander Rosas as saying, “I've been doing this for 24 plus years now, and no, I've unfortunately never seen anything like this when it comes to animal life lost.” Listen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.com The incident has left the small community of Prunedale in shock. Jason Maynard, a resident, described the chaos of that night, telling KSBW that upon hearing the gunshots, he instructed his wife and child to get down on the floor for safety.The reports added that officials have not yet identified a motive for the shooting. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-mans-shooting-spree-leaves-80-animals-dead-in-california-arrested-6504267

James Anderson will continue his role as fast-bowling mentor in England's series against Pakistan in October. Anderson, England's all-time leading wicket-taker, retired from international cricket following the first Test against West Indies in July. The 42-year-old immediately joined the England backroom team and remains on a central contract until the end of this month. Working in the coaching staff for the three-Test series against Pakistan would extend Anderson's relationship with the England side beyond his current deal. Anderson also told Sky Sports he was planning on joining England for their series in New Zealand in December. "At the minute, I'm due to go to Pakistan and New Zealand in the winter," he said. "Then nothing concrete after that. "I'm very new to this, I'm still learning as we go. It's partly me trying to figure out if this is where I want to go with the next stage of my career and also for them to figure out if I'm any good at it." Anderson retired from Test cricket following discussions with England captain Ben Stokes, coach Brendon McCullum and managing director Rob Key in April, with the management deciding they wanted to look to younger fast bowlers. In Anderson's absence, Gus Atkinson has taken 33 wickets in his first five Tests, while Matthew Potts and Olly Stone have returned to the Test side. In the third and final Test against Sri Lanka at The Oval, England have handed a debut to 20-year-old Josh Hull, a 6ft 7in left-armer from Leicestershire with only 16 wickets from 10 first-class matches. Anderson worked with Hull during the second Test at Lord's, when Hull was an unused member of the England squad. "There was a great moment at Lord's where you saw Josh Hull bowling in the middle and Jimmy standing at the top of his mark," Key told Test Match Special. "You think 'how good this is' - all of that knowledge, you don't want to lose that. He is able to pass it on. "Jimmy is not always the most outgoing, but he has really taken to coaching. "It would be great to have Jimmy in Pakistan, the same in New Zealand and who knows going forward. Jimmy has a few itches to scratch along the way but it is great to have him involved with us." Anderson has previously indicated an interest in continuing his playing career in T20 franchise leagues, despite not featuring in white-ball cricket since 2019. Speaking on the Tailenders podcast, which was released on Friday, Anderson hinted at talks over a deal. "There might be people behind the scenes chatting to people," he said. "I have not played white-ball cricket for a while so that is the first thing I need to get back to if I am to think about doing it. "I don't know if there is any interest so I will just ask around." There is some doubt over the schedule for the series in Pakistan. The Tests are due to be played in Karachi, Multan and Rawalpindi, but some grounds are undergoing renovation works before the Champions Trophy next year. One option could be to host part of the series outside of Pakistan, with Abu Dhabi a potential venue. Key said England have had nothing confirmed and will find it difficult to pick a squad while there is doubt over the location of the Tests. "I have heard Sri Lanka and South Africa," he said. "I don't think it will be there, personally. There are rumours flying around. "My guess is we will end in Multan. None of this is a security issue. They are trying to get grounds ready for the Champions Trophy. My guess is we will be in Pakistan - but that is a guess." Former England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff is also part of the coaching staff for the third Test against Sri Lanka, filling in for assistant coach Marcus Trescothick, who is taking charge of the white-ball team for the series against Australia beginning next week. Though there are no confirmed plans for Flintoff's continuing involvement with the England side, Key said "he will do more stuff with us in the winter". The 46-year-old has previously worked with England's white-ball and Lions teams, the latter of which are due to tour South Africa and Australia. "Freddie is loving coaching," said Key. "Sometimes it is a trait that is not spoken about enough - he is kind. All of the things Fred can be: funny, extrovert. He is kind. It is an underrated quality." https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/articles/c2dgkw0ewz0o

0p 50 Cent has recently shared why he stays away from marriage and wants to lead a celibate lifestyle. During an appearance on the latest episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the rap mogul responded to a question about why he’s never been married. “Listen, when you calm down you can focus. I've been good to me,” said the 49-year-old. Stephen asked what is then all about money accumulation without someone special. “[Money is] when things start getting complicated, things start getting confusing,” noted 50 Cent. The rapper further said, “If you go on a date but you have no interest in anything, I can see you now. I said, ‘God damn, girl, you fine, but you ain’t got nothing going on.” The Grammy winner added, “I am safe. I’m not a happy hostage. I’m here. I’m free.” He jokingly said, “I made some mistakes, just not that one.” Elaborating on how he spends his days without a romantic partner, 50 Cent remarked he “can get to about 105 pounds on dumbbells”. The host then addressed rapper’s daily life activities, saying, “just going home, watching Wheel of Fortune on TiVo, having a warm milk and going to bed, putting on your night shirt and cap.” To which, 50 Cent responded, “You make it sound like the worst thing ever.” https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1227354-50-cent-opens-up-about-his-choice-to-lead-a-celibate-lifestyle

Israeli soldiers killed an American woman participating in an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank on Friday, another protester who witnessed the shooting told The Associated Press. Two doctors said she was shot in the head. US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed the death of the 26-year-old woman but did not say whether she had been shot by Israeli troops. He said the US was gathering more information about the circumstances of her death and would have more to say. Click here to connect with us on WhatsApp He and the doctors who treated her released the woman's name, but the activist organisation she was volunteering with, the International Solidarity Movement, said her family had asked she not be identified. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an instigator of violent activity in the area of the protest. The woman who was fatally shot was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion, protests that have grown violent in the past: A month ago, American citizen Amado Sison was shot in the leg by Israeli forces, he said, as he tried to flee tear gas and live fire. Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who was also participating in the protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer on a hillside outside the northern West Bank town of Beita overlooking the Israeli settlement of Evyatar. Soldiers surrounded the prayer, and clashes soon broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said. The protesters and activists, including Pollak and the woman, retreated from the hill and the clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group's direction and shot at them. He saw the flares leave the nozzle of the gun when the shots rang out. He said the woman was about 10 or 15 metres behind him when the shots were fired. He then saw her lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death, he said. Two doctors said she had been shot in the head Dr. Ward Basalat, who administered first aid at the scene and Dr. Fouad Naffa, director of Rafidia Hospital in the nearby city of Nablus where she was taken. We tried to save the American citizen, we tried to revive the heart for several stages, but unfortunately, we did not succeed in restoring the heart to function, Naffa told The AP, adding that she had severe bone fragmentation and damage to brain tissue. Palestinian officials said the killing reflected how Israel has intensified its repression of Palestinian protests in the territory since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli forces rarely use live ammunition to put down protests inside Israel. But in the West Bank, Palestinian demonstrations are frequently met with live fire. Nablus Governor Ghassan Daghals wrote on X that the Israeli occupation wanted to kill for the sake of killing." A war of extermination in Gaza and a war in the West Bank that eats everything green, he wrote. It does not spare a child or any nationality. Hussein Al-Sheikh, the secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, wrote on X that the killing marked another crime added to the series of crimes committed daily by the occupation forces." Settlements are overwhelmingly viewed by the international community as illegal under international law. The settlement of Evyatar was initially an outpost unrecognized under Israeli law but was legalized by the Israeli cabinet last month, in a move the far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said was in response to recognition of Palestinian statehood by a number of countries. Israeli fire has killed over 690 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, Palestinian health officials say. In that time, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis in the territory have also increased. https://business-standard.com/world-news/israeli-soldiers-shoot-kill-american-woman-during-west-bank-protest-witness-says-124090601276_1.html