Computers & Linux News

Score Huge Discounts on Lego Sets for All the Family This Holiday Season - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 11:33
Whether you're shopping for kids or adults, there's something for everyone across these retailer sales.

9 Best Chef's Knives for 2023, Tested and Reviewed - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 11:00
Our list of best chef's knives includes a $25 Mercer that punches above its weight, a $650 splurge you have to see to believe and a bunch of beautiful blades in between.

The Race To 5G is Over - Now It's Time To Pay the Bill

SlashDot - Fri, 2023-12-08 11:00
Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything. But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found -- and the race to deploy the tech was costly in more ways than one. From a report: At CES in 2021, 5G was just about everywhere you looked. It was the future of mobile communications that would propel autonomous vehicles, remote surgery, and AR into reality. The low latency! The capacity! It'll change everything, we were told. Verizon and AT&T wrote massive checks for new spectrum licenses, and T-Mobile swallowed another network whole because it was very important to make the 5G future happen as quickly as possible and win the race. CES 2024 is just around the corner, and while telecom executives were eager to shout about 5G to the rafters just a few years ago, you'll probably be lucky to hear so much as a whisper about it this time around. While it's true that 5G has actually arrived, the fantastic use cases we heard about years ago haven't materialized. Instead, we have happy Swifties streaming concert footage and a new way to get internet to your home router. These aren't bad things! But deploying 5G at the breakneck speeds required to win an imaginary race resulted in one fewer major wireless carrier to choose from and lots of debt to repay. Now, network operators are looking high and low for every bit of profit they can drum up -- including our wallets. If there's a poster child for the whole 5G situation in the US, it's Verizon: the loudest and biggest spender in the room. The company committed $45.5 billion to new spectrum in 2021's FCC license auction -- almost twice as much as AT&T. And we don't have to guess whether investors are asking questions about when they'll see a return -- they asked point blank in the company's most recent earnings call. CEO Hans Vestberg fielded the question, balancing the phrases "having the right offers for our customers" and "generating the bottom line for ourselves," while nodding to "price adjustments" that also "included new value" for customers. It was a show of verbal gymnastics that meant precisely nothing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is it Cheaper to Buy Groceries Online and Have them Delivered? I Did the Math - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 10:49
Online grocery delivery is convenient but could it actually be cheaper than in-store shopping? I compared grocery lists from Amazon Fresh, FreshDirect and a national supermarket chain to find out.

Kick-Start Your New Year Fitness Regime With Horizon's Holiday Fitness Deals - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 10:46
Horizon Fitness is offering deep discounts on its cardio equipment like treadmills, indoor bikes and more.

Take $100 Off This Roku Streambar and Wireless Bass Bundle for the Holidays - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 10:36
Now you can revamp your entertainment space with 4K streaming and premium Dolby Audio for just $150.

Save 20% on Drinkware During BruMate's Holiday Sale - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 10:27
Save on insulated mugs, water bottles, can coolers and much more.

Apple Report Finds Steep Increase in Data Breaches, Ransomware

SlashDot - Fri, 2023-12-08 10:20
Data breaches and ransomware attacks are getting worse. Some 2.6 billion personal records have been exposed in data breaches over the past two years and that number continues to grow, according to a new report commissioned by Apple. From a report: Apple says the escalating intrusions, combined with increases in ransomware means the tech industry needs to move toward greater use of encryption. According to the report, prepared by MIT professor emeritus Stuart E. Madnick: 1. Data breaches in the US through the first nine months of the year are already 20% higher than for all of 2022. 2. Nearly 70 percent more ransomware attacks were reported through September 2023, than in the first three quarters of 2022. 3. Americans and those in the UK topped the list of those most targeted in ransomware attacks in 2023, followed by Canada and Australia. Those four countries accounted for nearly 70% of reported ransomware attacks. 4. One in four people in the US had their health data exposed in a data breach during the first nine months of 2023.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today's Best Savings Rates: Dec. 8, 2023 -- The Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Can Earn You Up to 5.35% - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 10:00
Not all savings accounts are created equal. These are some of the top ones worth considering.

Save on Photography Equipment and Capture Precious Holiday Memories This Season - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 09:57
The holidays are a great time to save on tech gear, including photography equipment.

Google's Best Gemini Demo Was Faked

SlashDot - Fri, 2023-12-08 09:40
Speaking of early-impressions of Gemini, users' confidence in Google might be shaken further to learn that the company pretty much faked the most impressive demo of Gemini. TechCrunch: A video called "Hands-on with Gemini: Interacting with multimodal AI" hit a million views over the last day, and it's not hard to see why. The impressive demo "highlights some of our favorite interactions with Gemini," showing how the multimodal model (that is, it understands and mixes language and visual understanding) can be flexible and responsive to a variety of inputs. To begin with, it narrates an evolving sketch of a duck from a squiggle to a completed drawing, which it says is an unrealistic color, then evinces surprise ("What the quack!") when seeing a toy blue duck. [...] Just one problem: the video isn't real. "We created the demo by capturing footage in order to test Gemini's capabilities on a wide range of challenges. Then we prompted Gemini using still image frames from the footage, and prompting via text." So although it might kind of do the things Google shows in the video, it didn't, and maybe couldn't, do them live and in the way they implied. In actuality, it was a series of carefully tuned text prompts with still images, clearly selected and shortened to misrepresent what the interaction is actually like.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today's Best CD Rates: Dec. 8, 2023 -- Grow Your Savings Faster With APYs as High as 5.65% - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 09:30
CD rates remain high, but recent drops suggest now is the time to lock in your earnings.

This Simple Device Makes Cooking Latkes a Mess-Free Affair - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 09:18
No more grease-splattered stove to clean up after frying your favorite Hannukah food.

Sonos Holiday Sale Offers Perfect Holiday Gifts for the Audiophile in Your Life - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 09:08
Sonos doesn't offer deals often so you should absolutely take advantage of this rare sale across its products.

Best Internet Providers in California - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 09:00
California is a big territory with a lot of broadband options. Here are the top internet providers for the Golden State.

UK Signals Microsoft's Partnership With OpenAI Faces Scrutiny

SlashDot - Fri, 2023-12-08 09:00
The UK's antitrust watchdog is considering whether Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership should be called in for a merger probe. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority said Friday it was seeking views from interested parties to comment on whether the two firms recent collaboration could result in competition issues in the UK. The move from the UK watchdog comes less than two months since it eventually approved Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Microsoft is the largest investor in OpenAI, having invested $13 billion into the startup so far. The software giant has incorporated several of OpenAI's products into its suite of enterprise tools, and the startup spends considerable amounts on Microsoft's cloud services. The CMA said it will look at whether the the balance of power between the two firms has fundamentally shifted to give one side more control or influence over the other. When asked to comment on the CMA's move a spokesperson at the European Commission said the regulator had been "following very closely the situation of control over OpenAI."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Pixel 7 Pro Is Down to a New Low Price of Just $439 Right Now - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 08:48
Our favorite Android phone just got even more affordable with this impressive holiday deal that takes more than half off its list price.

How the iPhone, Apple Watch and Snoopy Get Us Into a Vision Pro Mindset - CNET

CNET News - Fri, 2023-12-08 08:48
Commentary: Could these iOS 17 and WatchOS 10 features be part of an augmented reality future?

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