Tag: devices

Tag: devices

Global COVID monitoring is crashing as BA.2.86 variant raises alarm

Enlarge / WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, looks on during a press conference at the World Health Organization’s headquarters in Geneva, on December 14, 2022. (credit: Getty | FABRICE COFFRINI) With global attention and anxiety locked onto the latest coronavirus omicron subvariant BA.2.86, health officials and experts are still mostly in the dark about how the highly mutated virus will play out. At the start of the week, amid a flurry of headlines, researchers had only six genetic sequences of the virus in the public repository GISAID, even though the virus had already spread to at least four

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10X coders beware: Meta’s new AI model boosts coding and debugging for free

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Benj Edwards) Meta is adding another Llama to its herd—and this one knows how to code. On Thursday, Meta unveiled “Code Llama,” a new large language model (LLM) based on Llama 2 that is designed to assist programmers by generating and debugging code. It aims to make software development more efficient and accessible, and it’s free for commercial and research use. Much like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot Chat, you can ask Code Llama to write code using high-level instructions, such as “Write me a function that outputs the Fibonacci sequence.” Or it can assist with

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SpaceX completes successful hot fire test of its massive Starship rocket

Enlarge / SpaceX conducted a second static fire test of Booster 9 on Friday. (credit: SpaceX webcast) SpaceX conducted a second hot fire test of its Super Heavy booster on Friday afternoon, likely taking a key step toward the next launch of its massive new rocket. A few minutes after the test firing, SpaceX founder Elon Musk characterized it as “successful” on the social media network formerly known as Twitter. SpaceX later confirmed that all 33 Raptor engines ignited during the test and that all but two ran for the full six-second duration. This Super Heavy booster, the largest and

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New genetic analysis of Ötzi the Iceman yields some surprising findings

Enlarge / Study reveals that compared to other contemporary Europeans, Ötzi’s genome had an unusually high proportion of genes in common with those of early farmers from Anatolia. He was also likely bald (or nearly so) when he died. (credit: South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/Eurac/Marco Samadelli-Gregor Staschitz) In 1991, a group of hikers found the mummified remains of Ötzi the Iceman emerging from a melting glacier in the Alps—likely murdered, judging by the remains of an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder. The mummy’s genome was first sequenced in 2012, whereby the world learned that he likely had brown eyes, type

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Too many users abused unlimited Dropbox plans, so they’re getting limits

Enlarge (credit: Dropbox) Sometimes the honor system just doesn’t work. Up until yesterday, Dropbox offered an unlimited $24-per-user-per-month plan for businesses called Dropbox Advanced that came with an “as much as you need” storage cap. This was intended to free business users from needing to worry about quotas. But as with unlimited cell phone data plans, the bad behavior of a small group of users is apparently ruining unlimited Dropbox storage for everybody. The company said in a blog post yesterday that it was retiring its unlimited storage policy specifically because people were buying Dropbox Advanced accounts “for purposes like

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Not your average Toyota: The all-wheel drive GR Corolla, reviewed

Enlarge / Early mornings were made for cars like this, the Toyota GR Corolla. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin) Although the vast majority of our car reviews are for hybrids and electric vehicles, we do still appreciate a good enthusiast’s car. All the more so when they’re tweaked versions of more pedestrian fare. Built in low volume and with something special under the hood? Count us in. That brings us to today’s topic, the Toyota GR Corolla. Some regular readers might be feeling a touch of deja-vu at this point; Toyota builds the GR Corolla in three different specifications, and in March

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Let’s Rank The Fortnite Battle Pass Skins For Chapter 4 Season 4

There are plenty of reasons why the Fortnite battle pass has been such a successful concept–it’s a lot of stuff for not much money, FOMO, etc. But for me, as a collector, I appreciate that many of the highest-quality skins in Fortnite come from battle passes. Not every battle pass skin is a banger, of course–no pass has ever had a perfect record, and that includes the pass for Chapter 4 Season 4. But while they aren’t all home run hitters this time out, there’s plenty to love in this battle pass. The emotes that are included are probably the

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AMD Tackles The 1440p Market With New RX 7800 XT And RX 7700 XT GPUs

AMD is taking aim at the 1440p market with two new GPUs that attempt to balance generation-on-generation performance improvements and affordability. The RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT will both launch on September 6, with a free copy of Starfield to give you an easy way to properly test them. These two cards, priced at $500 and $450, respectively, are more squarely aimed at tackling Nvidia’s limp attempt at a mid-range card this generation, with both the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070 mostly failing to impress the wide range of PC consumers. The RX 7800 XT boasts some

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50 Cent Criticizes His Own Expendables 4 Movie Poster

Rapper and actor 50 Cent has reacted to a new poster for The Expendables 4 that focuses on his character. Posting on Instagram, the “In Da Club” singer criticized the artwork, which shows his character in tactical gear and brandishing a machine gun. “WTF did we run out of money?” he wrote. “Why my head look like it ain’t connected to my body.” He went on to say he’s sure the Sylvester Stallone character poster will make the actor “look great.” “SMH,” 50 Cent said, wrapping up his thoughts on his Expendables 4 poster. He plays the character Easy Day

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