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      Warner Bros. Discovery makes still more changes, will split streaming, TV business

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 6 days ago - 13:13

    Warner Bros. Discovery will split its business into two publicly traded companies, with one focused on its streaming and studios business and the other on its television network businesses, including CNN and Discovery.

    The US media giant said the move would unlock value for shareholders as well as create opportunities for both businesses, breaking up a group created just three years ago from the merger of Warner Media and Discovery.

    Warner Bros. Discovery last year revealed its intent to split its business in two, a plan first reported by the Financial Times in July last year. The company intends to complete the split by the middle of next year.

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      A long-shot plan to mine the Moon comes a little closer to reality

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 6 days ago - 13:03

    Look, no one said building a large harvester to roam around the Moon and sift through hundreds of tons of regolith to retrieve small amounts of helium-3 would be easy. And that's to say nothing of the enormous challenge of processing and then launching any of this material from the lunar surface before finally landing it safely on Earth.

    If we're being completely honest, doing all of this commercially is a pretty darn difficult row to hoe. Many commercial space experts dismiss it out of hand. So that's why it's gratifying to see that a company that is proposing to do this, Interlune, is taking some modest steps toward this goal.

    Moreover, recent changes in the tides of space policy may also put some wind in the sails of Interlune and its considerable ambitions.

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      Bill Atkinson, architect of the Mac’s graphical soul, dies at 74

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 6 days ago - 12:30

    On Thursday, pioneering computer engineer and Apple veteran William "Bill" Atkinson died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Portola Valley, California, surrounded by family. He was 74. "We regret to write that our beloved husband, father, and stepfather Bill Atkinson passed away," his family wrote on Facebook . "He was a remarkable person, and the world will be forever different because he lived in it."

    As Apple employee number 51, Atkinson transformed abstract computer science into intuitive visual experiences that millions would use daily: His QuickDraw graphics engine made the Macintosh interface possible; he introduced the wider world to bitmap editing with MacPaint; and HyperCard presaged hyperlinked elements of the World Wide Web by years.

    A screenshot of Bill Atkinson's MacPaint, released with the Macintosh in January 1984. A screenshot of Bill Atkinson's MacPaint, released with the Macintosh in January 1984. Credit: Benj Edwards / Apple

    "I say this with no hyperbole: Bill Atkinson may well have been the best computer programmer who ever lived," wrote veteran Apple analyst John Gruber on Daring Fireball in a tribute. "Without question, he's on the short list. What a man, what a mind, what gifts to the world he left us."

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      Apple’s AI-driven Stem Splitter audio separation tech has hugely improved in a year

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 6 days ago - 12:15

    Imagine that you have a song file—drums, guitar, bass, vocals, piano—and you want to rebalance it, bringing the voice down just a touch in the mix.

    Or you want to turn a Lyle Lovett country-rock jam into a slamming club banger, and all that's standing between you and the booty-shaking masses is a clean copy of Lovett's voice without all those instruments mucking things up.

    Or you recorded a once-in-a-lifetime, Stevie Nicks-meets-Ann Wilson vocal performance into your voice notes app... but your dog was baying in the background, and your guitar was out of tune. Can you extract the magic and discard the rest?

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      Ex-FCC Chair Ajit Pai is now a wireless lobbyist—and enemy of cable companies

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 6 days ago - 11:00

    Ajit Pai is back on the telecom policy scene as chief lobbyist for the mobile industry, and he has quickly managed to anger a coalition that includes both cable companies and consumer advocates.

    Pai was the Federal Communications Commission chairman during President Trump's first term and then spent several years at private equity firm Searchlight Capital. He changed jobs in April, becoming the president and CEO of wireless industry lobby group CTIA. Shortly after, he visited the White House to discuss wireless industry priorities and had a meeting with Brendan Carr , the current FCC chairman who was part of Pai's Republican majority at the FCC from 2017 to 2021.

    Pai's new job isn't surprising. He was once a lawyer for Verizon, and it's not uncommon for FCC chairs and commissioners to be lobbyists before or after terms in government.

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      Microsoft dives into the handheld gaming PC wars with the Asus ROG Xbox Ally

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 7 days ago - 20:52 · 1 minute

    Back in March, we outlined six features we wanted to see on what was then just a rumored Xbox-branded, Windows-powered handheld gaming device. Today, Microsoft's announcement of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally hardware line looks like it fulfills almost all of our wishes for Microsoft's biggest foray into portable gaming yet.

    The Windows-11 powered Xbox Ally devices promise access to "all of the games available on Windows," including "games from Xbox, Game Pass, Battle.net, and other leading PC storefronts [read: Steam, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect, etc]." But instead of having to install and boot up those games through the stock Windows interface, as you often do on handhelds like the original ROG Ally line , all these games will be available through what Microsoft is calling an "aggregated gaming library."

    Microsoft promises an "integrated library" can be used to access Windows games across a variety of launchers. Credit: Microsoft
    A tap of the Xbox button brings up the Game Bar for quick access to many functions and settings. Credit: Microsoft

    Asus and Microsoft are stressing how that integrated experience can be used with games across multiple different Windows-based launchers, promising "access to games to can't get elsewhere." That could be seen as a subtle dig at SteamOS-powered devices like the Steam Deck which can have significant trouble with certain titles that don't play well with Steam and/or Linux for one reason or another. Microsoft also highlights how support apps like Discord, Twitch, and downloadable game mods will also be directly available via the Xbox Ally's Windows backbone.

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      New adventures await the crew in Strange New Worlds S3 trailer

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 7 days ago - 19:53

    Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns for a third season next month.

    Apart from a short teaser in April, we haven't seen much of the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' upcoming third season , debuting next month. But Paramount+ has finally released the official trailer.

    (Spoilers for S2 below.)

    As previously reported , the S2 finale found the Enterprise under vicious attack by the Gorn, who were in the midst of invading one of the Federation's colony worlds. Several crew members were kidnapped, along with other survivors of the attack. Captain Pike (Anson Mount) faced a momentous decision: follow orders to retreat, or disobey them to rescue his crew. Footage shown last October at New York City Comic-Con picked up where the finale left off, giving us the kind of harrowing high-stakes pitched space battle against a ferocious enemy that has long been a hallmark of the franchise. (Of course Pike opted to rescue his crew.)

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      Cybercriminals turn to “residential proxy” services to hide malicious traffic

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 7 days ago - 11:15 · 1 minute

    For years, gray market services known as “bulletproof” hosts have been a key tool for cybercriminals looking to anonymously maintain web infrastructure with no questions asked. But as global law enforcement scrambles to crack down on digital threats , they have developed strategies for getting customer information from these hosts and have increasingly targeted the people behind the services with indictments. At the cybercrime-focused conference Sleuthcon in in Arlington, Virginia on Friday, researcher Thibault Seret outlined how this shift has pushed both bulletproof hosting companies and criminal customers toward an alternative approach.

    Rather than relying on web hosts to find ways of operating outside law enforcement's reach, some service providers have turned to offering purpose-built VPNs and other proxy services as a way of rotating and masking customer IP addresses and offering infrastructure that either intentionally doesn't log traffic or mixes traffic from many sources together. And while the technology isn't new, Seret and other researchers emphasized to WIRED that the transition to using proxies among cybercrminals over the last couple of years is significant.

    “The issue is, you cannot technically distinguish which traffic in a node is bad and which traffic is good,” Seret, a researcher at the threat intelligence firm Team Cymru, told WIRED ahead of his talk. “That's the magic of a proxy service—you cannot tell who’s who. It's good in terms of internet freedom, but it's super, super tough to analyze what’s happening and identify bad activity.”

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      The nine-armed octopus and the oddities of the cephalopod nervous system

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Saturday, 7 June - 12:00

    With their quick-change camouflage and high level of intelligence, it’s not surprising that the public and scientific experts alike are fascinated by octopuses. Their abilities to recognize faces , solve puzzles, and learn behaviors from other octopuses make these animals a captivating study.

    To perform these processes and others, like crawling or exploring, octopuses rely on their complex nervous system, one that has become a focus for neuroscientists. With about 500 million neurons —around the same number as dogs —octopuses’ nervous systems are the most complex of any invertebrate. But, unlike vertebrate organisms, the octopus’s nervous system is also decentralized, with around 350 million neurons , or 66 percent of it, located in its eight arms.

    “This means each arm is capable of independently processing sensory input, initiating movement, and even executing complex behaviors— without direct instructions from the brain ,” explains Galit Pelled , a professor of Mechanical Engineering, Radiology, and Neuroscience at Michigan State University who studies octopus neuroscience. “In essence, the arms have their own ‘mini-brains.’”

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