Kalakshar US

One day after X started to come back online for some people in Brazil, the country’s Supreme Court is threatening the social media company and Elon Musk-owned Starlink with hefty daily fines. In a new order posted online, Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered regulators to “reactivate” blocking of X and said that the two companies could be hit with close $1 million a day in fines for not complying.

The latest order from Moraes, who has been publicly sparring with Musk for months, comes after X became accessible again in Brazil for many users on Wednesday. The company said in an earlier statement the change was “an inadvertent and temporary service restoration” that happened as a result of changing network providers.

Following Brazil’s ban last month, X reportedly shifted to using Cloudflare’s servers in the region, which made it more difficult for Brazilian ISPs to carry out the block. The company said Wednesday it made the change in network providers in order to “to provide service to Latin America” and that it expected its service in Brazil to go offline again “soon.”

Now, Moraes says that X could be fined the equivalent of $921,000 a day, beginning September 19, for each day of “non-compliance” with the ban. Starlink, which previously saw its Brazilian bank accounts frozen amid the dispute, faces “joint liability” if X doesn’t pay, according to the order. Moraes also ordered the country’s internet regulator to “take immediate measures to prevent access to the platform by blocking the ‘CDN Cloudflare, Fastly and EdgeUno’ servers, and other similar ones, created to circumvent the court order that suspended the operation of the old Twitter in Brazil.”

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/brazil-threatens-daily-fines-for-x-and-starlink-for-non-compliance-with-ban-194542476.html?src=rss 

Get ready to question humanity’s control over the technology that surrounds us because another season of Netflix’s Black Mirror is in the works. Earlier today, the official Black Mirror X page revealed the cast of the new season coming next year along with some other interesting clues and Easter eggs.

The video features an old, flickering computer screen that appears to unload a complete data dump of the entire cast for season 7. Some of the names that jumped out at us includes Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti, Doctor Who star and Oscar winner Peter Capaldi (he won in 1995 with his live action short film Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life), Awkwafina, Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross and Rashida Jones. 

The list also included some of the cast who played virtual crew members of the USS Callister from the iconic fourth season episode of the same name. The names from the USS Callister episode that appeared on the list include Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson, Billy Magnussen, Milanka Brooks and Osy Ikhile.

We’ve known for a while now that series creator Charlie Brooker has been planning to revisit the crew of the USS Callister. The season 4 opening episode starred Jesse Plemmons as the chief technology officer named Robert of a top tier game studio and a big fan of a Star Trek-esque TV show called Space Fleet. By day, he gets pushed around and little credit for the company’s success from his colleagues and staff. He uses immersive virtual reality technology to play as Space Fleet Capt. Robert Daly away from work on a virtual starship and takes out his frustrations and anger on the crew in increasingly cruel and inhumane ways. The crew members were replicated in the game using his boss and staff members’ DNA that Robert obtained without their permission or knowledge. The crew revolt and escape to the open Internet while leaving a seething “Capt. Robert” stranded in the game.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a true Black Mirror reveal if it didn’t contain some clues and hidden items in the teaser. The loading screen features the studio name Tuckersoft, a reference to the game studio in the interactive “Bandersnatch” movie. The cast names are listed in alphabetical order by first name but they’ve been broken into eight groups. There are some cryptic phrases between the scrolling group names like “Too soon?”, “A rose for a rose” and “Shields 58 percent.”

Could these be episode titles? The latter definitely sounds like a reference to the USS Callister and Brooker and company love symbolic episode titles taken from songs for their tech hell stories like “Shut Up and Dance” and “Hang the DJ.” The new Black Mirror episodes haven’t even landed yet and they’ve already screwing with our heads.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/black-mirror-season-7-cast-revealed-in-a-cryptic-computer-message-203343148.html?src=rss 

The long-awaited PC port of God of War: Ragnarok is out. This comes nearly two years after the game was released for PS4 and PS5 to positive reviews. This is a pretty big deal on its own, but the port has a feature that not even the original console release had. Players can finally tell Kratos’ son Atreus to shut the heck up, as first reported by Kotaku.

In the original release, Atreus was like Ocarina of Time’s Navi on Adderall. He was, in a word, talkative. Even worse? He tended to ruin puzzle solutions by offering up hints unprompted. Many players complained that this happened even when they weren’t attempting a puzzle. 

In any event, the settings tab includes an option to reduce puzzle hints. This applies to the babbling Atreus, but also other companions throughout the game. I’m no game designer, but adding a mute button to some characters doesn’t seem like a difficult fix. In other words, bring this to the console versions Sony. Digital children should be seen and not heard.

The PC port also brings some other features to the table. There are now audio descriptions for the game’s cinematics and a set of streamer gifs to use on Twitch or YouTube. Of course, the port integrates with both NVIDIA and AMD’s upscaling tools, with support for ultrawide monitors. Let’s hear it for playing games as nature intended, with a ridiculous aspect ratio of 32:9.

The port needs a massive amount of hard drive space, anywhere from 175GB to 190GB, so start the install early in the morning for an afternoon play session. It’s available now via Steam and the Epic Games Store. As a bit of bad news, the PC specs required to play this game are on the beefy side, so performance on the Steam Deck will likely be underwhelming. Redditors are saying that it runs, but is only playable in 30FPS on the lowest settings.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/god-of-war-ragnaroks-pc-port-is-out-and-it-fixes-one-of-the-games-most-annoying-quirks-185925455.html?src=rss 

Autonomous vehicle outfit Cruise is slowly returning to operation in California following an incident in which a pedestrian was struck and dragged by a robotaxi for approximately 20 feet in October 2023. The company posted on X that it is reintroducing human-operated mapping vehicles to the streets in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Its next stated goal is “to progress to supervised testing with up to 5 AVs later this fall.”

The past year has not been a pretty picture for Cruise, which was acquired by GM in 2016. On October 2 last year, a pedestrian in San Francisco was hit by a human driver who fled the scene, but the impact put her in the path of a Cruise driverless taxi that dragged her 20 feet and ultimately stopped on top of her leg. After the incident, Cruise was stripped of its license to operate autonomous vehicles in California. The company stopped all operations of both its driverless cars and its manned robotaxi service in order to engage in a comprehensive safety review.

CEO Kyle Vogt resigned in November, followed by the exit of co-founder and chief product officer Daniel Kan. GM announced plans to slash Cruise’s funding and to restructure leadership based on external safety reviews. Nine more members of Cruise leadership were dismissed in December, and nearly a quarter of the company’s workforce was also cut that month. The final blow was an investigation by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2024, questioning whether the company failed to disclose additional details about the accident during reviews with regulators.

Since then, however, Cruise has gradually been bouncing back. Vehicles with drivers returned to Arizona in April and to Houston in June. The re-emergence in Texas was paired with an announcement that GM would invest $850 million into Cruise in support of its operational costs. Now it’s rejoined the California market, if in an extremely attenuated capacity. These new excursions have all been preliminary and none of the driverless cars have returned to the streets yet. But Cruise still has a long road ahead to prove its safety credentials and win back public trust.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/cruise-resumes-operations-in-california-thankfully-with-human-drivers-191522681.html?src=rss 

Google has found another way to turn your eyeballs into money: by turning paused YouTube videos into a new real estate for ads. A YouTube communications manager told The Verge they’ve seen “strong advertiser and strong reviewer responses” since they “rolled out Pause ads to all advertisers.”

YouTube first started looking at using ads on pause screens in 2023 with select advertisers. Google’s chief business officer Phillip Schindler announced last April that advertisers loved the new ad concept. YouTube’s viewers aren’t as enthusiastic about the idea.

Reddit users posted screenshots of the new pause screen ads and to say they aren’t happy with the ads is the understatement of the year.

The new ads aren’t just showing up on the website. Ads also pop up when you pause videos on the YouTube mobile app, according to others on the site.

Pause screen ads are not a new concept. Streaming services like AT&T’s DirecTV and Hulu show ads when the screen is paused if you have one of the lower tier subscription plans. Some Amazon products like the Fire tablets also show ads on the lock screen and Amazon announced last May that it plans to expand its ad space offerings for living-room devices, according to Amazon’s official blog.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/youtube/youtube-is-now-showing-ads-when-you-pause-videos-193622495.html?src=rss