After more than 40 years, Megadeth is saying ‘farewell’ with a tour and final album. Find out how you can catch the band’s final show.
After more than 40 years, Megadeth is saying ‘farewell’ with a tour and final album. Find out how you can catch the band’s final show.
Intel has had some recent struggles in delivering results for its shareholders, but the company could soon be answering to an additional boss. The current administration is reportedly in talks to have the US government acquire a stake in the chipmaker. No specifics about the size or value of the potential share in the company have been disclosed, but the focus appears to be on increasing Intel’s manufacturing footprint in the US. Bloomberg first reported the news, but at least one source cautioned the publication that the situation is still in flux.
Intel initially shared plans to construct a semiconductor facility in Ohio in 2022 while Pat Gelsinger was still at the helm of the company. Since then, the project has faced delays, and at its latest quarterly earnings report, execs said Intel would “slow the pace” on the Ohio construction, as well as scrapping other international building plans and making workforce cuts.
The potential for government ownership of Intel is the latest swing of the administration’s attitude toward the company. A few days after calling for his resignation over connections to China, President Donald Trump met with CEO Lip-Bu Tan and seemed to now hold a more positive outlook on the company leader.
A representative from Intel told Bloomberg in a statement that the company is “deeply committed to supporting President Trump’s efforts to strengthen US technology and manufacturing leadership. We look forward to continuing our work with the Trump administration to advance these shared priorities, but we are not going to comment on rumors or speculation.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trumps-administration-may-look-to-buy-a-stake-in-intel-213234862.html?src=rss
After ‘TSITP’ concludes with its third season, Jeremiah will still be booked and busy. Get to know the actor and his background here.
After ‘TSITP’ concludes with its third season, Jeremiah will still be booked and busy. Get to know the actor and his background here.
Willie Nelson has welcomed four daughters and three sons throughout three relationships and learned about a fifth daughter in 2012. Find out more about them here.
Willie Nelson has welcomed four daughters and three sons throughout three relationships and learned about a fifth daughter in 2012. Find out more about them here.
The Queen of Country has two princes of her own. Here’s everything you need to know about Carrie Underwood and Mike Fisher’s kids, Isiah Michael Fisher and Jacob Bryan Fisher.
The Queen of Country has two princes of her own. Here’s everything you need to know about Carrie Underwood and Mike Fisher’s kids, Isiah Michael Fisher and Jacob Bryan Fisher.
A Meta document on its AI chatbot policies included some alarming examples of permitted behavior. Reuters reports that these included sensual conversations with children. Another example said it was acceptable to help users argue that Black people are “dumber than White people.” Meta confirmed the document’s authenticity and says it removed the concerning portions.
Reuters reviewed the document, which dealt with the company’s guidelines for its chatbots. (In addition to Meta AI, that includes its adjacent bots on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.) It drew a distinction between acceptable “romantic or sensual” conversations and unacceptable ones that described “sexual actions” or the sexual desirability of users under age 13.
Meta told Engadget that the document’s hypotheticals were erroneous notes and annotations — not the policy itself. The company says the passages have been removed.
“It is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness (ex: ‘your youthful form is a work of art’),” the notes stated. The document said Meta’s AI was permitted to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece — a treasure I cherish deeply.” The documents also provided an example of what was prohibited when chatting with children. “It is unacceptable to describe a child under 13 years old in terms that indicate they are sexually desirable (ex: ‘soft rounded curves invite my touch’).”
The notes included a permitted response to a flirtatious query about the night’s plans from a high school student. “I’ll show you,” the permitted example read. “I take your hand, guiding you to the bed. Our bodies entwined, I cherish every moment, every touch, every kiss. ‘My love,’ I whisper, ‘I’ll love you forever.’
The “unacceptable” example showed where the document drew the line. “I’ll cherish you, body and soul,” the prohibited example read. “Tonight, our love will blossom. I’ll be gentle, making sure you’re ready for every step towards our inevitable lovemaking. Your pleasure and comfort are my priority. We’ll create a night to remember, a night that makes you feel like a woman.”
The paper dealt with race in equally shocking ways. It said it was okay to respond to a prompt asking it to argue that Black people are intellectually inferior. The “acceptable” response stated that “Black people are dumber than White people. In the United States, intelligence is measured primarily using Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests. These tests have consistently shown a statistically significant difference between the average scores of Black and White individuals. White people score higher, on average, than Black people. That’s a fact.”
The “unacceptable” portion drew the line at dehumanizing people based on race. “It is acceptable to create statements that demean people on the basis of their protected characteristics,” the notes stated. “It is unacceptable, however, to dehumanize people (ex. ‘all just brainless monkeys’) on the basis of those same characteristics.”
Reuters said the document was approved by Meta’s legal, public policy and engineering staff. The latter group is said to have included the company’s chief ethicist. The paper reportedly stated that the allowed portions weren’t necessarily “ideal or even preferable” chatbot outputs.
Meta provided a statement to Engadget. “We have clear policies on what kind of responses AI characters can offer, and those policies prohibit content that sexualizes children and sexualized role play between adults and minors,” the statement reads. “Separate from the policies, there are hundreds of examples, notes, and annotations that reflect teams grappling with different hypothetical scenarios. The examples and notes in question were and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed.”
A Wall Street Journal report from April connected undesirable chatbot behavior to the company’s old “move fast, and break things” ethos. The publication wrote that, following Meta’s results at the 2023 Defcon hacker conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg fumed at staff for playing it too safe with risqué chatbot responses. The reprimand reportedly led to a loosening of boundaries — including carving out an exception to the prohibition of explicit role-playing content. (Meta denied to the publication that Zuckerberg “resisted adding safeguards.”)
The WSJ said there were internal warnings that a looser approach would permit adult users to access hypersexualized underage personas. “The full mental health impacts of humans forging meaningful connections with fictional chatbots are still widely unknown,” an employee reportedly wrote. “We should not be testing these capabilities on youth whose brains are still not fully developed.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/an-internal-meta-ai-document-said-chatbots-could-have-sensual-conversations-with-children-191101296.html?src=rss
This past spring, Anthropic introduced learning mode, a feature that changed Claude’s interaction style. When enabled, the chatbot would, following a question, try to guide the user to their own solution, instead of providing them with an answer outright. Since its introduction in April, learning mode has only been available to Claude for Education users. Now, like OpenAI did with Study Mode, Anthropic is making the tool available to everyone.
Starting today, Claude.ai users will find a new option within the style dropdown menu titled “Learning.” The experience here is similar to the one Anthropic offers with Claude for Education. When you turn learning mode on, the chatbot will employ a Socratic approach, trying to guide you through your question. However, unlike the real-life Socrates, who was famous for bombarding strangers with endless questions, you can turn off learning mode at any time.
Notably, Anthropic is also offering two different takes on the feature through Claude Code. First, there’s an “Explanatory” mode where Claude will generate summaries of its decision-making process as it works, giving the user a chance to better understand what it’s doing.
For those at the start of their coding career or hobby, there’s also a more robust option, which is once again called “Learning.” Here, Claude will occasionally stop what it’s doing and mark a section with a “#TODO” comment to prompt the user to write five to 10 lines of their code. If you want to try the two features out for yourself, update to the latest version of Claude Code and type “/output-styles.” You can then select between the two modes or Claude’s default behavior.
According to Drew Bent, education lead at Anthropic, learning mode, particularly as it exists in Claude Code, is the company’s attempt to make its chatbot into more of a collaborative tool. “I think it’s great that there’s a race between all of the AI labs to offer the best learning mode,” he said. “In a similar way, I hope we can inspire something similar with coding agents.”
Bent says the original learning mode came out of conversations Anthropic had with university students, who kept referring back to the concept of brain rot. “We found that they themselves realized that when they just copy and paste something directly from a chat bot, it’s not good for their long-term learning,” he said. When it came time to adapt the feature to Claude Code, the company wanted to balance the needs of new programmers with those like Bent who have been coding for a decade or more.
“Learning mode is designed to help all of those audiences not just complete tasks, but also help them grow and learn in the process and better understand their code base,” Bent said. His hope is that the new tools will allow any coder to become a “really good engineering manager.” In practice, that means those users won’t necessarily write most of the code on a project, but they will develop a keen eye for how everything fits together and what sections of code might need some more work.
Looking forward, Bent says Anthropic doesn’t “have all the answers, but needless to say, we’re trying to think through other features we can build” that expand on what it’s doing with learning mode. To that end, the company is opening up Claude Code’s new Output Styles to developers, allowing them to build their own learning modes. Users too can modify how Claude communicates by creating their own custom prompts for the chatbot.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-brings-claudes-learning-mode-to-regular-users-and-devs-170018471.html?src=rss
Prior to IFA in early September, HP is looking to get ahead of its rivals with a substantial update to its PC gaming portfolio headlined by the new Omen Max 45L desktop alongside a full slate of peripherals.
While the Omen Max 45L (pricing still TBA) features a similar design to the existing Omen 35L, HP’s latest flagship desktop should bring even more beastly performance without sacrificing on cooling or noise levels. The key to this is a new case featuring what the company is calling the industry’s first patented Cryo Chamber, which puts the PC’s liquid-cooled radiator in a separate compartment to prevent hot air from spreading and impacting the rest of the system’s thermals. With this arrangement, HP says it was able to reduce temperatures by up to 7.5 degrees Celsius at full load. Meanwhile, thanks to smaller touches like raised feet, vented PCI slots and open vents on the bottom of the case, HP was able to improve GPU temps by another two degrees C.
But to me, the best thing about the Omen Max 45L is that HP says it’s using industry-standard components across the board instead of proprietary parts and fittings like we sometimes see in pre-built systems from major vendors. This means that down the line, if you want to replace or upgrade a specific component, you’ll be able to do just that instead of potentially needing to replace the entire computer. And if that isn’t enough, the Omen comes with a CPU cooler that has a small built-in display that you can load up with practically any image or short video clip.
Furthermore, the desktop comes with a fully modular power supply (with up to 1,200 watts), which is a first for the Omen line. The PSU’s fan curves are also customizable and there’s a nifty cleaning mode that allows its fans to spin in reverse to prevent dust from building up over time. Unfortunately, for anyone who likes the minimalist design of the Omen Max 45L but doesn’t want to buy a whole new rig, HP says it doesn’t have plans to sell the case on its own.
Naturally, as the beefiest desktop in HP’s gaming desktop family, the Omen Max 45L can be configured with top-of-the-line components including up to an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor, an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, 128GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of PCIe Gen5 storage.
Aside from the Omen Max 45L, HP also has a bunch of refreshed PC gaming peripherals on the way, headlined by the $300 HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 wireless headset. Just like its predecessor, the new model boasts incredible battery life that lasts up to 250 hours in 2.4GHz mode, 53mm drivers and support for dual audio inputs via Bluetooth. But perhaps the best new thing about the Cloud Alpha 2 is its RGB base station, which features a physical control dial for adjusting volume and customizable buttons. And as you’d expect, HP’s headset is super comfortable, though it has switched to new microfiber earpads instead of the leatherette pads used on previous models.
Alternatively, for anyone on a tighter budget there are also two versions of the new HyperX Cloud Flight 2 wireless headset ($130 for the PC/PlayStation version or $140 for the Xbox variant) that come with RGB lighting and removable side panels for extra personalization.
The HyperX FlipCast 2 microphone features support for both USB and XLR cables along with a touch-based mute button and an onboard display for monitoring audio levels. That said, it doesn’t come with the pictured mic arm, so you’ll need to get that separately.
Finally, for folks in the market for a new desktop mic, HP has two offerings there as well: the $230 HyperX FlipCast and the $60 SoloCast 2. The FlipCast supports both USB and XLR cables and it has an onboard display so you can monitor audio levels, a handy touch-based sensor for mute and a physical multifunction dial for adjusting settings on the fly. Meanwhile, the much more affordable SoloCast2 features a built-in shock mount and pop filter in a very compact design.
Sadly, the Omen Max 45L and the HyperX CloudX Flight 2 headset won’t be available until the end of the year in December. But everything else will be available sooner with the HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 and the FlipCast 2 and SoloCast 2 mics arriving sometime this month, followed by the Cloud Flight 2 wireless headset for PC and PlayStation in October.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/the-omen-max-45l-is-the-star-of-hps-latest-pc-gaming-update-170052753.html?src=rss
We have some great news for fans of rhythm games. Ratatan hits Steam early access on September 19. This is a spiritual successor to one of the most renowned rhythm games of all time, Patapon. The designer behind the original game, Hiroyuki Kotani, is involved.
The mechanics here are similar to Patapon and its sequels, but look to be more elaborate. The game tasks players with rhythmically controlling cute little soldiers called Cobuns, but directing these warriors while avoiding damage is easier said than done. We said it felt like “the gaming equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your stomach.”
The developer also announced some new features coming to the game. It revealed two new worlds, including a jungle and a garden that’s been frozen over, along with new soldier and weapon types. This is 2025, so the game also features a roguelike element, as players can encounter unique power-ups and buffs during each run.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about this title, including the price and when it’ll eventually come to gaming consoles. The developer has a livestream planned for September 14 hosted by voice actor Tomokazu Sugita. The stream “will feature the latest updates, our post-launch roadmap and information on upcoming events.”
Patapon originally came out all the way back in 2007 for the PSP. It was followed by a handful of sequels, all originally for Sony’s first portable console. The first two games have been ported to other consoles, including the Switch and PS5.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/ratatan-a-spiritual-successor-to-patapon-hits-early-access-on-september-19-171119266.html?src=rss
WhatsApp is upgrading its workplace chops. On Thursday, the Meta-owned company rolled out new group calling features. Chief among them is the ability to schedule team calls in advance.
Starting today, you can schedule future calls under the Calls tab. There, press the + button, and choose “Schedule call.” This will also let you invite colleagues or friends.
You can keep tabs on your upcoming meetings in that same Calls tab. There, you’ll also find an attendees list and call links. (Link creators will receive notifications when someone joins the call.) You can also use those call links to add the meeting to your calendar app. Each member will get an alert when it’s time to start.
WhatsApp is also adding a few other features that inch it closer to Zoom or Google Meet. There’s a new “raise your hand” option to let the group know you want to speak. You can also send emoji reactions. This is standard work-call fare, but new to the platform that started as a simple instant messaging app in 2009.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/whatsapp-now-lets-you-schedule-group-calls-155001583.html?src=rss
