SoylentNews

Microsoft and China

anubi writes:

It looks like Chinese routers aren't the only things that come loaded with bonus software...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/microsoft-vows-fix-security-gaps-china-hackers-government-emails-rcna156995

NBC news reports:

Microsoft's president told Congress on Thursday his company accepted responsibility for major security failures that let China-linked hackers penetrate federal government computer networks, but defended his company's presence in China.

Brad Smith struck a humble tone in his testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee and promised that the giant tech firm would fix security gaps in its products, which are widely used across federal agencies.

----------------------------------------------------

Somehow, I think it's so ironic that my own government is such a fan of security, yet, by enforced ignorance, the very things that they implement give only the illusion of security. No one knows if there's a backdoor or not, and who can verify?

Gone are the days just a homebrew CRC16 digester, knowledge of exact file length, and a list of files to check, would tell me with almost absolute certainty if my system files had been monkeyed with. If so, which ones? And what did they do? ( File compare... FC.EXE to known good backup copies of the critical files stored on another floppy )

"We acknowledge that we can and must do better"

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/13/tech/microsoft-president-congress-cybersecurity-failures/

Microsoft "accepts responsibility for each and every one" of the issues cited in a scathing US government-backed report on the tech giant's cybersecurity failings, Microsoft President Brad Smith will tell US lawmakers Thursday, according to his prepared testimony.

"We acknowledge that we can and must do better, and we apologize and express our deepest regrets to those who have been impacted," reads Smith's testimony to the House Homeland Security Committee. He is set to testify before the panel Thursday afternoon in a hearing the committee says will assess the impact of Microsoft's "cybersecurity shortfalls" on homeland security.

Microsoft has been at the center of two sweeping hacking campaigns in the last year allegedly carried out by Chinese and Russian spies.

A report issued in April by the US Cyber Safety Review Board found that Microsoft committed a "cascade" of "avoidable errors" that allowed Chinese hackers to breach the tech giant's network and later the email accounts of senior US officials last year, including the secretary of commerce. The board is comprised of government and private cybersecurity experts led by the Department of Homeland Security.

Smith says Microsoft has for months been overhauling its cybersecurity practices, in part by implementing recommendations from the US government-backed board.

looorg writes:

News consumption is down. The reasons appear to be multiple from that the readers don't trust the sources anymore, disinformation, journalistic agendas, AI (fake-) news or that news in general are just downers and sad to read.

This year's report reveals new findings about the consumption of online news globally. It is based on a YouGov survey of more than 95,000 people in 47 countries representing half of the world's population.

The report looks at the growing importance of platforms in news consumption and production, including more visual and video-led social media such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. It explores audience attitudes towards the use of AI in news, the role of creators and news influencers, how much people pay for news and more.

[...] There is no single cause for this crisis; it has been building for some time, but many of the immediate challenges are compounded by the power and changing strategies of rival big tech companies, including social media, search engines, and video platforms.

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024/dnr-executive-summary

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024
(report available as pdf or read to you or in various summaries)

I guess I have entered the porch phase of my news consumption. I don't care for video news, or having someone read the news to me. I much prefer to just read it.

Original Submission

Inescapable Conclusion: USC Researchers Prove Earth's Core is Losing Speed

mrpg (and 2 more Anonymous Cowards) write:

Inescapable Conclusion: USC Researchers Prove Earth's Core Is Losing Speed:

A new study provides clear evidence that the Earth's inner core began to decrease its speed around 2010.

USC scientists have discovered that the Earth's inner core is slowing down relative to the planet's surface, a phenomenon that started around 2010 after decades of the opposite trend. This significant shift was detected through detailed seismic data analysis from earthquakes and nuclear tests. The slowdown is influenced by the dynamics of the surrounding liquid outer core and the gravitational pull from the Earth's mantle, potentially affecting Earth's rotation slightly.

Scientists at USC have proven that the Earth's inner core is backtracking — slowing down — in relation to the planet's surface, as shown in new research published on June 12 in the journal Nature.

The scientific community has long debated the movement of the inner core, with some studies suggesting it rotates faster than the Earth's surface. However, recent research from USC conclusively shows that starting around 2010, the inner core has slowed down, now moving at a pace slower than that of the planet's surface.

"When I first saw the seismograms that hinted at this change, I was stumped," said John Vidale, Dean's Professor of Earth Sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "But when we found two dozen more observations signaling the same pattern, the result was inescapable. The inner core had slowed down for the first time in many decades. Other scientists have recently argued for similar and different models, but our latest study provides the most convincing resolution."

The inner core is considered to be reversing and backtracking relative to the planet's surface due to moving slightly slower instead of faster than the Earth's mantle for the first time in approximately 40 years. Relative to its speed in previous decades, the inner core is slowing down.

The inner core is a solid iron-nickel sphere surrounded by the liquid iron-nickel outer core. Roughly the size of the moon, the inner core sits more than 3,000 miles under our feet and presents a challenge to researchers: It can't be visited or viewed. Scientists must use the seismic waves of earthquakes to create renderings of the inner core's movement.

Vidale and Wei Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences utilized waveforms and repeating earthquakes in contrast to other research. Repeating earthquakes are seismic events that occur at the same location to produce identical seismograms.

c0lo writes:

Adobe

June 8 - Adobe users are furious about the company's terms of service change to help it train AI

Adobe is facing backlash over recent updates to its Terms of Service for the company's generative AI products.

The revised terms, affecting over 20 million global users of Adobe's Creative Cloud Suite, include language that some users interpret as allowing Adobe to access, view or listen to their content, including sensitive content such as information protected by non-disclosure agreements.

Updates to the Terms of Service have also sparked concern among creative users, with some alleging that Adobe is surveilling their work and potentially using it to train AI models.

Section 2.2 states that Adobe may use techniques such as machine learning to analyze user content to improve its services and software.

Instagram/Meta

Meta to use Instagram and Facebook posts from as far back as 2007 to train artificial intelligence tools

In short: Meta is about to start using social activity on Facebook and Instagram accounts to train its AI tools, and in Australia, users won't be able to opt out.

Data from as far back as 2007 will be used, including posts, photos and messages to Meta's AI chatbot.

What's next? The policy comes into effect on June 26.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A study from the University of California San Diego reveals that differences in brain development associated with autism begin in utero, with larger and faster-growing brain cortical organoids in autistic toddlers correlating with more severe symptoms. This research opens new avenues for understanding and potentially treating autism.

Some children with autism face severe, enduring challenges including developmental delays, social difficulties, and possibly an inability to speak. Meanwhile, others may have milder symptoms that lessen over time.

The disparity in outcomes has been a mystery to scientists, until now. A new study, published in Molecular Autism by researchers at the University of California San Diego, is the first to shed light on the matter. Among its findings: The biological basis for these two subtypes of autism develops in utero.

Researchers used blood-based stem cells from 10 toddlers, ages 1 through 4, with idiopathic autism (in which no single-gene cause was identified) to create brain cortical organoids (BCOs), or models of the fetal cortex. They also created BCOs from six neurotypical toddlers.

Often referred to as gray matter, the cortex lines the outside of the brain. It holds tens of billions of nerve cells and is responsible for essential functions like consciousness, thinking, reasoning, learning, memory, emotions and sensory functions.

Among their findings: The BCOs of toddlers with autism were significantly larger — roughly 40 percent — than those of neurotypical controls, according to two rounds of study performed in different years (2021 and 2022). Each round involved the creation of hundreds of organoids from each patient.

Reference: “Embryonic origin of two ASD subtypes of social symptom severity: the larger the brain cortical organoid size, the more severe the social symptoms” by Eric Courchesne, Vani Taluja, Sanaz Nazari, Caitlin M. Aamodt, Karen Pierce, Kuaikuai Duan, Sunny Stophaeros, Linda Lopez, Cynthia Carter Barnes, Jaden Troxel, Kathleen Campbell, Tianyun Wang, Kendra Hoekzema, Evan E. Eichler, Joao V. Nani, Wirla Pontes, Sandra Sanchez Sanchez, Michael V. Lombardo, Janaina S. de Souza, Mirian A. F. Hayashi and Alysson R. Muotri, 25 May 2024, Molecular Autism.
  DOI: 10.1186/s13229-024-00602-8

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

[...] AMD SVP and CMO John Taylor posted on LinkedIn that the Ryzen AI 300 chips the company showed at Computex 2024 targets will enable Copilot experiences later in 2024. Tom’s Hardware clarified with AMD that this means the features won't be available at launch.
 
  “Yes, Copilot+ will come via a Windows Update later this year,”  we were told. This means that laptops with the Ryzen AI processor won’t be Copilot+ certified at launch, so it cannot use features like Paint’s Cocreator, Restyle Image, or the Recall feature that Microsoft has delayed.

However, since AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 chips do not have Microsoft’s AI certification yet, users who pick this processor won’t enjoy those Copilot+ features, even though the Ryzen AI 300’s NPU offers 50 TOPS — which ismore than the 45 TOPS that the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus outputs via their NPUs. Nevertheless, AMD says that the Copilot+ certification will arrive later this year, meaning these laptops will eventually get Windows’ AI features via a free Windows Update.

But even if the Ryzen AI 300 chip does not get the Microsoft Copilot+ branding at launch, you can still take advantage of the processor’s AI capabilities via third-party software. Apps like Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Blender, which are likely to take advantage of the Ryzen AI 300’s NPU core (Adobe and Blender are listed as ISV partners), will allow you to use their AI features on device — no need to connect a distant AI server.

Intel's Lunar Lake chips are also expected to be in laptops getting Copilot+ branding sometime this year, but we don't know the dates just yet.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers have discovered that microplastics, once ingested, travel from the gut to tissues such as the liver, kidneys, and brain, potentially causing significant health issues. The team’s findings emphasize the critical link between gut health and overall well-being, with ongoing studies exploring how diet and gut microbiota interact with microplastic absorption. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

It’s happening every day. From our water, our food, and even the air we breathe, tiny plastic particles are finding their way into many parts of our body.

But what happens once those particles are inside? What do they do to our digestive system?

In a recent paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, University of New Mexico researchers found that those tiny particles – microplastics – are having a significant impact on our digestive pathways, making their way from the gut and into the tissues of the kidney, liver, and brain.

Research continues to show the importance of gut health. If you don’t have a healthy gut, it affects the brain, it affects the liver and so many other tissues. So even imagining that the microplastics are doing something in the in the gut, that chronic exposure could lead to systemic effects.

[...] While other researchers are helping to identify and quantify ingested microplastics, Castillo and his team focus on what the microplastics are doing inside the body, specifically to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and to the gut immune system.

Over a four-week period, Castillo, postdoctoral fellow Marcus Garcia, PharmD, and other UNM researchers exposed mice to microplastics in their drinking water. The amount was equivalent to the quantity of microplastics humans are believed to ingest each week.

Microplastics had migrated out of the gut into the tissues of the liver, kidney and even the brain, the team found. The study also showed the microplastics changed metabolic pathways in the affected tissues.

In Vivo Tissue Distribution of Polystyrene or Mixed Polymer Microspheres and Metabolomic Analysis after Oral Exposure in Mice” by Marcus M. Garcia, Aaron S. Romero, Seth D. Merkley, Jewel L. Meyer-Hagen, Charles Forbes, Eliane El Hayek, David P. Sciezka, Rachel Templeton, Jorge Gonzalez-Estrella, Yan Jin, Haiwei Gu, Angelica Benavidez, Russell P. Hunter, Selita Lucas, Guy Herbert, Kyle Joohyung Kim, Julia Yue Cui, Rama R. Gullapalli, Julie G. In, Matthew J. Campen, and Eliseo F. Castillo, 10 April 2024, Environmental Health Perspectives.
  DOI: 10.1289/EHP13435

Original Submission

upstart writes:

FAA investigating how titanium parts with falsified records wound up in Boeing and Airbus planes - Japan Today:

Federal regulators are investigating how parts made with titanium that was sold with falsified quality documentation wound up in Boeing and Airbus passenger jets that were built in recent years.

Boeing and Airbus said Friday that planes containing the parts are safe to fly, but Boeing said it was removing affected parts from planes that haven't been delivered yet to airline customers.

It will be up to regulators including the Federal Aviation Administration to decide whether any work needs to be done to planes that are already carrying passengers.

The FAA said it is "investigating the scope and impact of the issue." The agency said Boeing reported the problem covering material from a distributor "who may have falsified or provided incorrect records." The FAA did not name the distributor.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A complaint that Tesla has misled consumers with the name of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) and Autopilot features, brought by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, will be allowed to go forward, according to a report from Bloomberg Monday.

Tesla had previously defended the use of the term, which is now known as “Full Self-Driving (Supervised),” as a free speech issue. But an administrative judge ruled the complaint from the California DMV could continue on Monday, according to Bloomberg.

The decision comes as Tesla faces federal investigations into FSD technology, which is often blamed when Tesla vehicles are involved in crashes. Officially, Tesla acknowledges that FSD doesn’t allow the average user to ignore the road completely, something that the average person would probably understand as a fully autonomous vehicle.

But CEO Elon Musk has long been predicting that FSD will allow for completely autonomous transportation. And as recently as last week, he touted the latest version by suggesting it may be even more powerful than the name sounds.

“FSD 12.4.1 releases today to Tesla employees,” Musk tweeted on June 5. “If that goes well, then it will be released to a limited number of external customers this weekend. There are a massive number of changes to this build. It should arguably be called v13, but we’re sticking to 12.”

[...] Musk even claimed that soon people will be able to use FSD for as long as a year before a human needs to intervene, though he included a very important caveat.

“Two other versions are in earlier stages of testing: 12.5 and 12.6, which could be called v14 and v15. We are starting to get to the point where, once known bugs are fixed, it will take over a year of driving to get even one intervention,” Musk wrote.

Original Submission

Although it might seem that the site is not progressing there is nothing that could be further from the truth...

The New Company and Transfer Of Assets

A new company has now been formed, along with IRS agreement that we are a registered as a 501(c)(3) company (donations will be tax deductible for anyone under the US IRS system) , and we have our own bank account and Board. Therefore, I informed the current Board of this at the end of last week requesting that we initiate the transfer of site ownership and its assets. I also proposed a way that we could do this with the minimum of disruption to the site itself. Ideally, it should from the community point of view be nothing more than a redirection of URLs to different IP addresses. The proposal has to be studied and accepted by the current Board, or they might suggest an alternative proposal. NCommander is moving home for much of this week and so I do not expect a response in the next few days.

Site Downtime

We are experiencing a recurring problem with a drive that keeps filling up. Several of our community have offered suggestions which have been implemented but they do not appear to be having the desired effect. Further investigation is ongoing but, for now at least, the problem has been resolved by freeing up space by moving files that did not have to be on that particular drive to a different drive on that server. I would like to thank the community for their patience but there are only 3 people who have easy access to that particular server, and I am one of them. The configuration of the infrastructure is not straightforward, and I am not a sys-admin. So to some extent we are still reliant on NCommander and kolie for some of the technical expertise or advice that is sometimes necessary, and to whom I am grateful for any assistance that they can give.

Submissions

We have had a small number of our community helping by making submissions that meet our stated interests and topics of discussion. There has also been a handful of submissions on the '/dev/random' topic which have also received a very healthy number of comments. But for the majority we are still relying on upstart and Arthur (both bots) to bring fresh material to our submission queue. Any relevant submissions from the community would be welcome and I encourage you to think about the more unusual and loosely-tech-related topics that you would like to see discussed. A fully prepared submission would be ideal but if all we get is a URL then that is just putting a greater workload on the small number of active editors that we currently have. Try to at least provide some kind of summary and perhaps ask your own questions to prompt the community to respond. We can do all of the formatting to meet the site's needs for you. But if all you have is a URL then we will try to make a submission from it. Off-topic submissions that are just a URL will probably not be processed.

Spamming

There has been a significant reduction in the amount of spamming anywhere on the site over the last few weeks. It hasn't gone completely but it is currently manageable by normal moderation by the community, and occasionally by the staff.

Complaints

Complaining about things you don't like on the site by means of public comments is not recommended and is usually a waste of your time and ours. If it is something that can be rectified immediately then we will, of course, do so but anything more significant takes a lot of time for the few staff that we have. Complaining anonymously will not be actioned. If you wish to make a complaint then we must have a way of contacting you privately. This can be any email address that you choose, providing that it lasts until the problem can be investigated and any necessary action taken to remedy the problem. We will probably have further questions to help us resolve the Issue and we will also need to inform you of the progress of our investigations and the final decision. That will be at least several days as an absolute minimum. If you keep repeating the same complaint anonymously in different threads and over a period of time it will be treated as spam - as was explained about 3 years ago in a Meta by Martyb.

If it is not important enough to justify an email then it is possibly your personal problem and not something on the site that must be changed. Any alternative response could result in the staff being tied up in malicious anonymous complaints which we have not got the resources to address.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A groundbreaking study led by the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology in collaboration with Dominican University of California explores how small molecules derived from sea sponges affect energy production in mitochondria and details their remarkably targeted effects on various types of cancers.

[...] The research focused on mycothiazole (MTZ), a molecule found in the marine sponge C. mycofijiensis, and its synthetic analog 8-O-acetylmycothiazole (8-OAc). These molecules demonstrated significant efficiency in inhibiting the function of electron transport chain (ETC) complex I, a key component of mitochondrial energy production.

The study compared both molecules to the more extensively studied ETC inhibitor rotenone. Mainly used as an agricultural pesticide, rotenone has exhibited anti-cancer properties in human cells in previous studies. However, in this study, rotenone also displayed significant toxicity to non-cancer cells in addition to its effect on cancerous cells.

Both MTZ and 8-OAc exhibited higher toxicity against liver carcinoma, breast cancer, and glioblastoma cells compared to non-cancerous cells in vitro, demonstrating markedly better selectivity than rotenone. Notably, 8-OAc, which is more shelf-stable than MTZ, showed the best selectivity for cancer cells versus healthy cells, highlighting its potential in future therapeutic development, Sanabria said.

"When we test the drugs in human cells, they preferentially target cancer cells for cell death pathways. It does so very robustly; we're getting anywhere from 60% to 80% cell death in cancer cells," they said.

"But when we treat non-cancer cells with the exact same concentrations, we're getting very little effect. Not only are we not seeing any cell death, these drugs basically have no change to the transcriptome of non-cancer cells, which suggests that it's really doing nothing to the non-cancerous cells at the same concentrations that it's able to kill cancer cells."

More information: Naibedya Dutta et al, Investigating impacts of the mycothiazole chemotype as a chemical probe for the study of mitochondrial function and aging, GeroScience (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s11357-024-01144-w

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

DeepComputing has announced a successor to its Roma laptop, which was the first notebook of its kind to use a RISC-V-compatible processor.

Called DC-Roma RISC-V Laptop II, the device is claimed to be the first RV-based laptop in the world to run Ubuntu out of the box. It's not the first RISC-V laptop to use Linux in general as the original Roma came with Alibaba's own Linux-based OS, OpenAnolis. However, given that Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distributions, it's certainly a milestone for the upcoming instruction set architecture (ISA).

"As RISC-V is becoming a competitive ISA in multiple markets, porting Ubuntu to RISC-V to become the reference OS for early adopters was a natural choice," Ubuntu developer Canonical said in a statement.

DeepComputing's second RISC-V laptop features a SoC from a relatively obscure Chinese firm, SpacemiT. This isn't unusual for DeepComputing, which is based in Hong Kong and previously relied on an SoC from StarFive, a different Chinese chip designer, for the original Roma laptop.

That might sound strange to anyone following developments in RISC-V laptops, since it was initially reported even by RISC-V International itself that the Roma laptop used a chip from Alibaba. However, as far as The Register can tell, Roma shipped with StarFive's JH7110, which features a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz, an integrated GPU made by Imagination, and no neural processing unit (NPU) at all, despite what DeepComputing's official product page says.

[...] Additionally, the 2 TOPS NPU doesn't seem like it can really back up Canonical's claims of "powerful AI capabilities." For reference, 2 TOPS is small even compared to the old Google Edge TPU with its 4 TOPS, and nowhere near Hailo's latest, low-end Hailo-8L, which features in the Raspberry Pi AI Kit.

[...] Regardless of actual performance, DeepComputing and Canonical can at least claim to have achieved a first, one that's especially important for RISC-V's ambitions in the PC market. RISC-V has to start somewhere, and being able to offer the full Linux experience in a regular laptop is a significant step.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Renowned for a thriving and intricately studied population of around 900 red deer, the Isle of Rùm [often written as Rum], part of Scotland's Inner Hebrides, is often considered an outdoor laboratory for scientific research. But the earthworms on Rum are equally remarkable. These invertebrates act as "ecosystem engineers", actively shaping the landscape, often after humans have left their mark on this remote island.

My investigations over 30 years have uncovered how people have influenced the current fragmented and uneven distribution, diversity and abundance of earthworms on this national nature reserve.

While taking my geography students on field trips to Rum in the mid-1990s, I realized there was scope for research on earthworm ecology. One of my Ph.D. students was studying soil development here and she quickly alerted me to differences in earthworm numbers found below different species of trees planted in the late 1950s. More worms lived below birch and oak trees than beneath pine trees or on unplanted moorland. This discovery spurred me into action.

Rum's human history goes back 9,000 years. Early humans came here to collect bloodstone, a flint-like mineral used to make arrowheads and other hunting or cutting tools. The island was deforested by early humans and the wet climate (with more than 2m of rain per year) led to the leaching of soil nutrients. The resulting poor-quality acidic soil supported moorland plants and low numbers of just three earthworm species.

If nothing else had happened to Rum soils, then this would be a very unexciting place to undertake research on earthworms.

But subsequent human inhabitants improved soils sufficiently to eke out a living as tenant farmers at a few locations around the coast. They used kelp seaweeds to fertilise the cultivated land and enrich soil quality. Then, some 200 years ago, these hardworking people were forcibly removed from their settlements on Rum (and much of Scotland) in the "Highland clearances".

At sites on Rum such as Harris, Dibidil and Kilmory, distinct ridges and furrows nicknamed "lazybeds" remain on the landscape. These indicate where the land was painstakingly dug by hand to grow potatoes and other crops. The furrows allowed drainage and the crops were grown on raised ridges. Two centuries since the last cultivation, these soils are still more fertile than surrounding areas, and they continue to support more earthworms.

At Papadil, another abandoned settlement, seldom visited these days, a brown forest soil has developed below stands of trees planted a century ago. Within these trees, colleagues and I found large earthworm burrows about 1cm in diameter. On an island with no badgers and no moles, a good supply of leaf litter for food and little disturbance from humans, we found the UK's largest Lumbricus terrestris ever reported in the wild.

At over 13g, some three times the normal weight for this species, these earthworms may have been up to ten years old. This really was an exciting find. We returned the worms to the soil—hopefully they have proliferated.

hubie writes:

Digital-only consoles are a trap, not a blessing:

The Xbox Games Showcase may have been the best of the hours of adverts beamed into our eyeballs this weekend, but it wasn't perfect. I mean, in an ideal world we wouldn't get so mindlessly excited about spending money anyway, we'd just play the games we love and then ruminate deeply on them in the vast, cavernous libraries where we write our criticism. But it is human to want, to covet, and to plant our flag in the ground for a team that does not care about us, only how much currency we have in our wallets.

Alongside the exciting game reveals – Doom: The Dark Ages, Fable, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, South of Midnight, too many to count – Xbox revealed a brand new console: the Xbox Series X digital edition. It follows in the footsteps of PlayStation's similarly slimline console, and is terrible news for gamers the world over.

Xbox wants to get you into its ecosystem by any means possible. We've known for years that consoles are often sold at a loss because that money is made up by the vast profit margins of selling the games themselves. So if Xbox offers a low-cost console to get you hooked, more people will be able to buy those profitable games.

It seems that the digital-only Series X is an acknowledgement of the issues with the Series S. The lack of power means many developers have skipped over Xbox entirely this generation, due to the fact that Microsoft reportedly wants any game available on Xbox to be able to run on the lesser hardware as well as the big, black box.

However, I'm here to tell you that this low-price console is not the blessing you may think it is. Xbox isn't the saviour of the poor, swooping in with angel wings to offer a games console to those who previously couldn't afford it. It's a corporation that wants your money, and a digital-only console gives it the monopoly on your wallet.

For those that don't follow webtoon "Least I Could Do", the current story arc might be amusing...and a basis for discussion?
        Starts here, https://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20240610

Julie: Did you take the trash out?
Rayne: AI can do it. (face in pillow, followed by Rayne taking out the trash)
Rayne: Fu**ing AI.

      https://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20240611
Rayne: Everyone is going about AI all wrong.
        I don't want robots creating my movies and books.
        I want it to take out the garbage. Unload the dishwasher...

       

[Ed. comment: Why do you suppose all of the hype is in "thinking" AI and it never blew up for more utilitarian activities? Is a Roomba about as good as it is going to get for helping us with our mundane tasks? Or is it just that the people with the most money in the game are also in the best positions to drive the narrative? --hubie]

Original Submission