Friday 26th April 2024

There's a Rare $25 Discount on the Nintendo Switch OLED Right Now

There's a strong chance we will see Nintendo's next-generation console in 2025, but if you just have been itching to play some Nintendo games, the Switch remains an excellent buy. You're in luck because Amazon is offering $25 off when you clip the on-page coupon, dropping the price to $324. Not only is this a rare discount, but it's also one of the best prices we've tracked on the console. The deal applies to both the White and Neon Red and Blue versions, and the Mario Red Edition is also on sale for $5 more (no coupon clipping required).

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Google Thinks It Can Cash In on Generative AI. Microsoft Already Has

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is confident that Google will find a way to make money selling access to generative AI tools. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says his company is already doing it.

Both companies reported better-than-expected quarterly sales and profit on Thursday. And the stock prices of both soared on the results, with Alphabet further buoyed by its new plans to buy back more shares and issue its first-ever dividend.


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Oral McGuire: How to live with fire

Uncontrolled fire threatens nature — but the right kind of fire can maintain the health and balance of the land, says fire management expert Oral McGuire. As a leader in the Nyungar community of southwestern Australia and a former firefighter, he connects traditional wisdom with modern techniques to wield fire in a way that promotes biodiversity and heals the spirit of the land at the same time.Continued here

Deciphered Herculaneum papyrus reveals precise burial place of Plato

Historical accounts vary about how the Greek philosopher Plato died: in bed while listening to a young woman playing the flute; at a wedding feast; or peacefully in his sleep. But the few surviving texts from that period indicate that the philosopher was buried somewhere in the garden of the Academy he founded in Athens. The garden was quite large, but archaeologists have now deciphered a charred ancient papyrus scroll recovered from the ruins of Herculaneum, indicating a more precise burial location: in a private area near a sacred shrine to the Muses, according to Constanza Millani, director of the Institute of Heritage Science at Italy's National Research Council.

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Toyota will spend $1.4 billion to build electric 3-row SUV in Indiana

US electric vehicle manufacturing got a bit of a boost today. Toyota has revealed that it is spending $1.4 billion to upgrade its factory in Princeton, Indiana, in order to assemble a new three-row electric SUV. That will add an extra 340 jobs to the factory, which currently employs more than 7,500 workers who assemble the Toyota Sienna minivan and the Toyota Highlander, Grand Highlander, and Lexus TX SUVs.

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Millions of IPs remain infected by USB worm years after its creators left it for dead

A now-abandoned USB worm that backdoors connected devices has continued to self-replicate for years since its creators lost control of it and remains active on thousands, possibly millions, of machines, researchers said Thursday.

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Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Noble Numbat, overhauls its installation and app experience

History might consider the most important aspect of Ubuntu 24.04 to be something that it doesn't have: vulnerabilities to the XZ backdoor that nearly took over the global Linux scene.

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Can an online library of classic video games ever be legal?

This long-running argument was joined once again earlier this month during livestreamed testimony in front of the Copyright Office, which is considering new DMCA rules as part of its regular triennial process. During that testimony, representatives of the Software Preservation Network and the Library Copyright Alliance defended their proposal for a system of "individualized human review" to help ensure that temporary remote game access would be granted "primarily for the purposes of private study, scholarship, teaching, or research."

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Apple releases eight small AI language models aimed at on-device use

In the world of AI, what might be called "small language models" have been growing in popularity recently because they can be run on a local device instead of requiring data center-grade computers in the cloud. On Wednesday, Apple introduced a set of tiny source-available AI language models called OpenELM that are small enough to run directly on a smartphone. They're mostly proof-of-concept research models for now, but they could form the basis of future on-device AI offerings from Apple.

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HMD's first self-branded phones are all under $200

HMD has been known as the manufacturer of Nokia-branded phones for years now, but now the company wants to start selling phones under its own brand. The first is the "HMD Pulse" line, a series of three low-end phones that are headed for Europe. The US is getting an HMD-branded phone, too—the HMD Vibe—but that won't be out until May.

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