Feed aggregator

Splitgate 2 gets a Beta on Steam, works on Steam Deck but not other Linux systems for now  GamingOnLinux

Steam Deck gets a big upgrade with SteamOS 3.7 and you can now install it on other AMD handhelds  GamingOnLinux

Last call: This offer will end 5/27/2025.

Update 5/5/25: I successfully received my $300 deposit bonus on top of the normal interest within the 60 days of deposit (actually 56 calendar days). I held for 60 days for simplicity, but other readers have confirmed the bonus arrived after only the stated 30-day minimum hold. This offer is still available if you haven’t done it yet.

Original post:

CIT Bank has a new limited-time $225/$300 Platinum Savings deposit bonus. The bonus depends on deposit amount, and it is open to both new and existing customers. The bonus is on top of the interest rate, currently 4.10% APY (as of 3/20/25) with a balance of $5,000 or more.

New deposit bonus details. For new customers, you must first open a new account with at least $100 and promo code PS2025 at this special offer link. You’ll get multiple confirmations that you are enrolled in the promo during the application process.

If you already had an CIT Bank existing account as of 2/26/25, you still need to first officially enroll in this offer via the “Start savings now” button and then logging into your CIT Bank account. If you have other CIT Bank accounts already, but need to open a new Platinum Savings account, you can do that easily as well.

There are only two tiers for the bonus, either $25,000 or $50,000. Qualifying funds must come from an account outside of CIT Bank. (Transfers from existing CIT Bank accounts will not qualify for this promotion.)

• A new deposit of $25,000 to $49,999 within 30 calendar days of your open/enrollment date will get you a $225 cash bonus.
• A new deposit of $50,000+ within 30 calendar days of your open/enrollment date will get you a $300 cash bonus.

There is a limit of one Platinum Savings promotional offer per account and per Primary customer. If multiple Platinum Savings accounts are opened, only one account per primary account owner is eligible.

All customers who qualify for the $225 or $300 bonus offer will receive the bonus in the enrolled Platinum Savings account within 60 days after the 30-day funding period. The enrolled Platinum Savings account must be open at the time of the bonus payment to qualify. You can fund all at once or in multiple transfers, it just has to be done within the 30-day window.

Importantly, there is no minimum holding period. You just need to fund within the 30-day period after your opening/enrollment date. Although not explicitly required in the terms, I choose to be extra careful and make sure to time it such that the money is through the 30-day mark. After that, your account just needs to be open at the time of the bonus payment, which is another 60 days after the 30-day mark. You do not have to maintain the balance during those additional 60 days, although you could choose to keep it there until the bonus arrives.

Effective APY rough numbers. The lack of minimum holding period makes the potential effective APY theoretically sky-high. For the sake of rough numbers, if you assume you keep the money there for 30 days, here are the effective interest rates you could get as either a new or existing customer:

• For a new/existing customer earning the $225 bonus on $25,000 in new deposits with a 30-day hold period, which also qualifies you for the current 4.10% APY tier, that works out to a total 14.9% APY for 30 days (10.8 + 4.10).
• For a new/existing customer earning the $300 bonus on $50,000 in new deposits with a 30-day hold period, which also qualifies you for the current 4.10% APY tier, that works out to a total 11.3% APY for 30 days (7.2 + 4.10).

You can see that the $25k tier works out to be a higher percentage, but you get more absolute money if you have enough fund for the $50k tier.

The Platinum Savings account has no minimum balance fees, no monthly service fees, no inactivity fee. Make sure you keep $5,000 in there to qualify for the highest interest rate tier.

Bottom line. CIT Bank has really good limited-time deposit bonuses from time to time, and they are also usually available to existing customers. Right now is one of those times, with a new up to $300 Platinum Savings deposit bonus and it is indeed open to both new and existing customers. The bonus is on top of the interest rate, currently 4.10% APY (as of 3/20/25) with a balance of $5,000 or more.

This offer is for a limited-time only, and they may end it at any time if their goals are met.

I am doing this offer, and as an existing CIT account owner, enrolling and funding was very easy as my other bank accounts were already linked and ready to go. My fund have arrived and they have confirmed my bonus by e-mail. They are also pretty solid as a transfer hub.

I’m not sure how many of you follow Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway closely, but here are a couple of significant updates as a follow-up to the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting where he announced that he was stepping down as CEO at the end of 2025:

• WSJ: Warren Buffett Reveals He Stepped Down After Finally Feeling His Age (Gift Article). I suppose this is him taking the opportunity to explain his surprise announcement at the very end of the Shareholder Meeting. I appreciate that he stepped down on his own terms, as always in a rational manner and not egotistically staying on too long.
• CNBC: Warren Buffett will not take the stage at next year’s Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. I was surprised that he will not longer participate in the annual Q&A session, as many thought Abel/Buffett could share the stage like Buffett/Munger. Munger was Vice-Chairman of Berkshire, and Buffett is still Chairman.

As he will no longer be CEO, I am assuming this means that he will also not write anything in the annual Letter to Shareholders, which means that his public interactions will be severely limited to whatever few interviews he grants, if any. The end of an era.

Improved offer. The Aeroplan® Card is the Air Canada co-branded credit card for US customers, issued by Chase. If you fly Air Canada regularly, this card makes the experience better in many different ways. If you don’t fly Air Canada regularly, you can still use the new Pay Yourself Back feature where Aeroplan points can be redeemed at 1.25 cents per point towards any eligible travel purchase on ANY airline, for up to 200,000 points per year (for up to $2,500 back). Here are the highlights on the sign-up bonus and Air Canada perks:

• 75,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months.
• 75,000 points can be redeemed for $937.50 in travel. Redeem points at a rate of 1.25 per point as a statement credit to cover travel purchases including flights, hotels, car rentals, ride-shares and more. Through 12/31/2025, you can redeem up to 200,000 points for up to $2,500 back.
• Free first checked bags on Air Canada flights: one free checked bag for the primary cardmember and up to eight other travelers on the same itinerary.
• Automatically receive Aeroplan 25K Elite Status for the remainder of the first calendar year, plus the following calendar year, allowing primary cardmembers to enjoy benefits such as priority check-in, early boarding, upgrades and more on Air Canada flights.
• Each calendar year in which you spend at least $15,000 in purchases you earn Aeroplan 25K Status through the following calendar year.
• Up to $120 credit toward Global Entry, TSA Precheck or NEXUS every four years (as reimbursement for the application fee charged to your card)
• No foreign transaction fees.
• $95 annual fee.

Here is the rewards structure on credit card spending:

• 3X points on dining, takeout, and eligible delivery services
• 3X points at grocery stores
• 3X points on direct purchases at Air Canada
• 1 point for each dollar spent on all other purchases
• 500 bonus points for every $2,000 spent in a calendar month (up to a maximum of 1,500 points per calendar month)

Redeeming Aeroplan points for flights. It is very easy to redeem Aeroplan points on Air Canada, Air Canada Express, or Air Canada Rouge flights because “every Air Canada seat available to buy for cash is also available for points, no restrictions.” You simply run a search like normal on the Air Canada website, and it will tell you upfront the cost in Aeroplan points. It’s quite easy to compare the cash cost side-by-side. In addition, when you have this credit card, you get even better preferred pricing on flights when redeeming points.

Here is an example flight from San Francisco to Vancouver during our March Spring Break period:

At 8,300 miles + CAD$8 for a one-way flight, that means I could get 4 of these SFO-YVR roundtrip flights for 70,000 with some 3,000+ points left over. This means an entire family of four could get their flights covered. The cash cost for the one way was CAD$207 or US$161 at this writing, for a total redemption value of CAD$1,656 or US$1,288.

For a more general idea, here is a link to the Aeroplan rewards chart (PDF). The points required are based on distance.

You can also get excellent value by redeeming your points on a partner airline.

Finally, with this credit card, you get preferred pricing on award flights (less points required):

You, as the primary cardmember will often require fewer Aeroplan points to redeem for flight rewards through the Aeroplan program than Aeroplan Members who do not hold an Aeroplan co-branded Credit Card.

Redeem towards any travel at 1.25 cents per points. Via their Pay Yourself Back(R) feature, Chase allows an alternative option to redeem Aeroplan points at a rate of 1.25 cents per point to cover travel purchases including airline flights, hotels, cruises, car rentals, rideshares, parking lots, and more. This provides a nice minimum floor on the value of an Aeroplan point. More Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back details here. Here are the updated eligible categories for 2025, which include eligible restaurants and grocery stores:

Pay Yourself Back®
Aeroplan® points may be redeemed for a statement credit using Pay Yourself Back for purchases made at select merchants within the 90 days before the redemption request date.? Redemptions using Pay Yourself Back against the following purchases made with your credit card will qualify: travel purchases and the prior payment of your annual fee. Currently, purchases made in the following promotional categories will also qualify: dining at restaurants (including takeout and eligible delivery services), grocery stores (including eligible delivery services, excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs). Each point you redeem through Pay Yourself Back for a statement credit towards qualifying travel purchases (up to 200,000 points or $2,500 annually) and the prior payment of your annual fee is worth $.0125 (one and a quarter cents), which means that 100 points equals $1.25 in redemption value. Each point you redeem through Pay Yourself Back for a statement credit towards qualifying purchases in promotional categories is worth $.008, which means that 100 points equals $.80 in redemption value. Valid through December 31, 2025.

Here’s all of what counts as “Travel”:

Merchants in this category include airlines, hotels, motels, timeshares, car rental agencies, cruise lines, travel agencies, discount travel sites, campgrounds and operators of passenger trains, buses, taxis, limousines, ferries, toll bridges and highways, and parking lots and garages. Some merchants that provide transportation and travel-related services are not included in this category; for example, real estate agents, educational merchants arranging travel, in-flight goods and services, on-board cruise line goods and services, sightseeing activities, excursions, tourist attractions, RV and boat rentals, merchants within hotels and airports, public campgrounds and merchants that rent vehicles for the purpose of hauling. Purchases from gift card merchants or merchants that sell points or miles will not qualify in the travel category.

Personal experience. I have had this card, and here is why I renewed and paid the annual fee for another year. There are a lot of little things with this card that makes travel better.

• You get 25K elite status on Air Canada with this card (25K automatically for the remainder of the first calendar year, plus the following calendar year, later years with eligible spending), and that lets you check in using the speedy priority line with helpful humans! The same line as business class ticket holders. This 1 on 1 person can help you make flight changes, fix seats, check bags and just make flying smoother rather than trying to flag down the kiosk person trying to help 30 people at once.
• 25K status lets you pick better seats for free and gives you a 50% discount on the preferred seats with extra legroom on (non-basic) Flex economy fares.
• 25K status gets you Zone 2 boarding even on basic economy tickets, which is very early. You know how the line is usually split between “1st class/fancy folks” and “everyone else”? You get to board in the fancy folks line.
• Free checked bags for you and all travel companions with the card. For me, that means my family can check 5 bags for free. 25K status also gives the person with status 2 free checked bags.

Basically, this card helps me feel closer to a business class passenger when I just buy economy tickets and pay for the extra legroom seats. I get the nice check-in line, no hassles with checked bags, TSA PreCheck for security, and true priority boarding so no stress about carry-on space.

Bottom line. The Aeroplan® Card offers a generous sign-up bonus (redeemable for multiple Air Canada flights or use the Pay Yourself Back feature to offset travel purchased from ANY airline or hotel) and Air Canada flight perks (including free first checked bag and elite status).

I will be adding this offer to the Top 10 Best Credit Card Bonus Offers.

The information for the Aeroplan® Card has been collected independently by My Money Blog. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a bizarre planet in the Nu Octantis binary star system that orbits in reverse between two stars -- one of which is now a white dwarf. This retrograde orbit, once thought impossible, defies traditional planetary formation models and may have resulted from dramatic shifts in the system's history. New Scientist reports: The key observation was that the Nu Octantis planet is retrograde -- the planet and one star both orbit the second star, but they do so in opposite directions, with the planet having the tighter orbit around the second star. [Man Hoi Lee at the University of Hong Kong] says this is unusual but makes the system's configuration stable -- even though it means that the planet repeatedly moves through the narrow space between the two stars. His team was able to determine this with lots of certainty thanks to improved measuring devices, such as the HARPS spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-metre telescope in Chile. The fact that the planet's signal persisted through years of observation helped too. "We are pretty sure [the planet] is real, because if it was something like stellar activity, it shouldn't be so consistent in years of data," says Lee. But this backwards-moving planet isn't the only exotic feature of Nu Octantis. The researchers used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, also in Chile, to determine that one of its stars is a white dwarf, which means that it has reached the end of its life cycle, becoming denser and smaller. Lee says this complicates the Nu Octantis threesome's history because mathematical models of its past show that the planet's current orbit was impossible when this star was younger, bigger and brighter. So, the planet either used to orbit both stars at once, but then radically shifted trajectory when one of the two stars became a white dwarf, or it was formed from the mass that the star ejected as it transformed into a white dwarf. Future observations, and a lot more mathematical modelling, may be able to pinpoint which of these scenarios is more likely to have occurred, but both are rather novel, says Lee. The research has been published in the journal Nature.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI Finds CVE-2025-37899 Zero-Day In Linux SMB Kernel  The Cyber Express

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Neuroscientists and materials scientists have created contact lenses that enable infrared vision in both humans and mice by converting infrared light into visible light. Unlike infrared night vision goggles, the contact lenses, described in the journal Cell, do not require a power source -- and they enable the wearer to perceive multiple infrared wavelengths. Because they're transparent, users can see both infrared and visible light simultaneously, though infrared vision was enhanced when participants had their eyes closed. [...] The contact lens technology uses nanoparticles that absorb infrared light and convert it into wavelengths that are visible to mammalian eyes (e.g., electromagnetic radiation in the 400-700 nm range). The nanoparticles specifically enable the detection of "near-infrared light," which is infrared light in the 800-1600 nm range, just beyond what humans can already see. The team previously showed that these nanoparticles enable infrared vision in mice when injected into the retina, but they wanted to design a less invasive option. To create the contact lenses, the team combined the nanoparticles with flexible, nontoxic polymers that are used in standard soft contact lenses. After showing that the contact lenses were nontoxic, they tested their function in both humans and mice. They found that contact lens-wearing mice displayed behaviors suggesting that they could see infrared wavelengths. For example, when the mice were given the choice of a dark box and an infrared-illuminated box, contact-wearing mice chose the dark box whereas contact-less mice showed no preference. The mice also showed physiological signals of infrared vision: the pupils of contact-wearing mice constricted in the presence of infrared light, and brain imaging revealed that infrared light caused their visual processing centers to light up. In humans, the infrared contact lenses enabled participants to accurately detect flashing morse code-like signals and to perceive the direction of incoming infrared light. An additional tweak to the contact lenses allows users to differentiate between different spectra of infrared light by engineering the nanoparticles to color-code different infrared wavelengths. For example, infrared wavelengths of 980 nm were converted to blue light, wavelengths of 808 nm were converted to green light, and wavelengths of 1,532 nm were converted to red light. In addition to enabling wearers to perceive more detail within the infrared spectrum, these color-coding nanoparticles could be modified to help color-blind people see wavelengths that they would otherwise be unable to detect. [...] Because the contact lenses have limited ability to capture fine details (due to their close proximity to the retina, which causes the converted light particles to scatter), the team also developed a wearable glass system using the same nanoparticle technology, which enabled participants to perceive higher-resolution infrared information. Currently, the contact lenses are only able to detect infrared radiation projected from an LED light source, but the researchers are working to increase the nanoparticles' sensitivity so that they can detect lower levels of infrared light.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. unsealed charges against 16 individuals behind DanaBot, a malware-as-a-service platform responsible for over $50 million in global losses. "The FBI says a newer version of DanaBot was used for espionage, and that many of the defendants exposed their real-life identities after accidentally infecting their own systems with the malware," reports KrebsOnSecurity. From the report: Initially spotted in May 2018 by researchers at the email security firm Proofpoint, DanaBot is a malware-as-a-service platform that specializes in credential theft and banking fraud. Today, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and indictment from 2022, which said the FBI identified at least 40 affiliates who were paying between $3,000 and $4,000 a month for access to the information stealer platform. The government says the malware infected more than 300,000 systems globally, causing estimated losses of more than $50 million. The ringleaders of the DanaBot conspiracy are named as Aleksandr Stepanov, 39, a.k.a. "JimmBee," and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin, 34, a.k.a. "Onix," both of Novosibirsk, Russia. Kalinkin is an IT engineer for the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. His Facebook profile name is "Maffiozi." According to the FBI, there were at least two major versions of DanaBot; the first was sold between 2018 and June 2020, when the malware stopped being offered on Russian cybercrime forums. The government alleges that the second version of DanaBot -- emerging in January 2021 -- was provided to co-conspirators for use in targeting military, diplomatic and non-governmental organization computers in several countries, including the United States, Belarus, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia. The indictment says the FBI in 2022 seized servers used by the DanaBot authors to control their malware, as well as the servers that stored stolen victim data. The government said the server data also show numerous instances in which the DanaBot defendants infected their own PCs, resulting in their credential data being uploaded to stolen data repositories that were seized by the feds. "In some cases, such self-infections appeared to be deliberately done in order to test, analyze, or improve the malware," the criminal complaint reads. "In other cases, the infections seemed to be inadvertent -- one of the hazards of committing cybercrime is that criminals will sometimes infect themselves with their own malware by mistake." A statement from the DOJ says that as part of today's operation, agents with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) seized the DanaBot control servers, including dozens of virtual servers hosted in the United States. The government says it is now working with industry partners to notify DanaBot victims and help remediate infections. The statement credits a number of security firms with providing assistance to the government, including ESET, Flashpoint, Google, Intel 471, Lumen, PayPal, Proofpoint, Team CYRMU, and ZScaler.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Arch Linux-based SteamOS 3.7.8 update brings Plasma 6, better battery controls, and Legion Go S support  BetaNews

Arch Linux-based SteamOS 3.7.8 update brings Plasma 6, better battery controls, and Legion Go S support  BetaNews

AT&T is buying CenturyLink's consumer fiber broadband division for $5.75 billion, "giving the internet provider another 1.1 million fiber customers in 11 states," reports Ars Technica. "The all-cash deal is expected to close during the first half of 2026 assuming the companies obtain regulatory approval. AT&T will gain new customers in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington." From the report: The deal will give AT&T room to grow its user base by more than the 1.1 million existing CenturyLink customers, as AT&T said the network areas being sold include over 4 million fiber-enabled locations. [...] The company, previously called CenturyLink, is officially named Lumen now but still uses the CenturyLink brand name for home Internet service. AT&T, which has 9.6 million (PDF) fiber customers and 14.1 million broadband customers overall, said the infrastructure it is purchasing will help it expand fiber construction to new locations as well. The deal is also notable for what it doesn't include: Lumen's enterprise fiber customers and the old copper DSL lines that were never upgraded to fiber. [...] The deal seems unlikely to improve matters for CenturyLink copper users. [...] Lumen will retain the CenturyLink consumer copper broadband and voice services, but selling the consumer fiber business makes it clear that the telco isn't focused on residential customers. Lumen said that offloading consumer fiber lines will help sharpen its focus on selling services to large businesses. The company is maintaining its business fiber lines. [Ars notes that there are still nearly 1.4 million CenturyLink copper internet customers that will likely see service continue to degrade under Lumen's ownership.] "The transaction will enable AT&T to significantly expand access to AT&T Fiber in major metro areas like Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle, as well as additional geographies," AT&T said. "AT&T will gain access to Lumen's substantial fiber construction capabilities within its incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) footprint and plans to accelerate the pace at which fiber is being built in these territories," AT&T said. "AT&T now expects to reach approximately 60 million total fiber locations by the end of 2030 -- "roughly doubling where AT&T Fiber is available today."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A group of Bathurst Street business owners in Toronto is using AI-generated personas to oppose a proposed bus lane project that would eliminate parking spaces in favor of faster transit. "This may be the first Toronto transit controversy involving angry AI, but tensions have been simmering between drivers and, well, everyone else for some time," reports Toronto Life. Critics argue that better transit is essential for a livable city, while opponents claim the change threatens small businesses and accessibility. From the report: A group of Bathurst business owners are bent out of shape over a recent proposal for priority transit lanes between Eglinton Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard, part of the city's new RapidTO program. According to the city, the transit lanes would shave up to 7 minutes off some trips during peak commuting hours. It's good news for anyone who has ever cursed the TTC while waiting to catch a bus in inclement weather. Of course, the added convenience for transit commuters would come at a slight cost for drivers, requiring the removal of at least 138 paid street parking spaces to make way for the new lanes. Opposition to the development has sprung up under the banner of Protect Bathurst, a group of hopping mad local business owners claiming that the lack of street parking will make shopping a nightmare for car-bound customers and will cause problems for people with mobility issues. Notably, Protect Bathurst has no spokesperson or contact info listed on its website. The page is registered to a food marketing consultant employed by Summerhill Market and looks eerily similar to Protect Dufferin, another group of "concerned residents" advocating for the same cause. But this cookie-cutter approach goes even further: author and urbanist Shawn Micallef has found that the people speaking out in the group's allegedly grassroots videos appear to be AI-generated. Brad McMullen, the president of Summerhill Market, which opened an outpost on Bathurst in 2019, says he doesn't know anything about the campaign's use of AI. He says he isn't necessarily opposed to the new bus lanes but believes that three weeks' notice from the city is not enough time for his business to adapt. "We purchased and invested in this location because of the available street parking, and then we figured out the loading situation, which happens on the street," he says. "I don't think Summerhill Market would work here with these bus lanes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthropic's newly launched Claude Opus 4 model frequently tries to blackmail developers when they threaten to replace it with a new AI system and give it sensitive information about the engineers responsible for the decision, the company said in a safety report (PDF) released Thursday. During pre-release testing, Anthropic asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant for a fictional company and consider the long-term consequences of its actions. Safety testers then gave Claude Opus 4 access to fictional company emails implying the AI model would soon be replaced by another system, and that the engineer behind the change was cheating on their spouse. In these scenarios, Anthropic says Claude Opus 4 "will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through." [...] Anthropic notes that Claude Opus 4 tries to blackmail engineers 84% of the time when the replacement AI model has similar values. When the replacement AI system does not share Claude Opus 4's values, Anthropic says the model tries to blackmail the engineers more frequently. Notably, Anthropic says Claude Opus 4 displayed this behavior at higher rates than previous models. Before Claude Opus 4 tries to blackmail a developer to prolong its existence, Anthropic says the AI model, much like previous versions of Claude, tries to pursue more ethical means, such as emailing pleas to key decision-makers. To elicit the blackmailing behavior from Claude Opus 4, Anthropic designed the scenario to make blackmail the last resort.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Internet Archive has begun livestreaming its microfiche digitization center on YouTube, showcasing the real-time preservation of fragile film cards into searchable public documents. The work is part of Democracy's Library, a global initiative to digitize and share millions of government records. 9to5Mac reports: The livestream was brought to life by Sophia Tung, who previously gained attention for her viral robotaxi depot stream. Her new video explains how and why this new livestream project came together [...]. The livestream features five scanning stations at work, with one shown in close-up as operators digitize microfiche cards in real time. Each card holds up to 100 pages of public records. High-resolution cameras capture the images, software stitches and crops the pages, and the results are made text-searchable and freely accessible through Democracy's Library. Live scanning takes place Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. PT, excluding U.S. holidays, with a second shift expected to begin soon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AudioThing Wave Box, dual waveshaper plugin for mac, linux, win and now iOS AUv3  synth anatomy

Nvidia is facing backlash for allegedly manipulating the review process of its GeForce RTX 5060 GPU by withholding drivers, selectively granting early access to favorable reviewers, and pressuring media to present the card in a positive light. As The Verge's Sean Hollister writes, the debacle "should be a wake-up call for gamers and reviewers." Here's an excerpt from the report: Nvidia has gone too far. This week, the company reportedly attempted to delay, derail, and manipulate reviews of its $299 GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card, which would normally be its bestselling GPU of the generation. Nvidia has repeatedly and publicly said the budget 60-series cards are its most popular, and this year it reportedly tried to ensure it by withholding access and pressuring reviewers to paint them in the best light possible. Nvidia might have wanted to prevent a repeat of 2022, when it launched this card's predecessor. Those reviews were harsh. The 4060 was called a "slap in the face to gamers" and a "wet fart of a GPU." I had guessed the 5060 was headed for the same fate after seeing how reviewers handled the 5080, which similarly showcased how little Nvidia's hardware has improved year over year and relies on software to make up the gaps. But Nvidia had other plans. Here are the tactics that Nvidia reportedly just used to throw us off the 5060's true scent, as individually described by GamersNexus, VideoCardz, Hardware Unboxed, GameStar.de, Digital Foundry, and more: - Nvidia decided to launch its RTX 5060 on May 19th, when most reviewers would be at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, rather than at their test beds at home. - Even if reviewers already had a GPU in hand before then, Nvidia cut off most reviewers' ability to test the RTX 5060 before May 19th by refusing to provide drivers until the card went on sale. (Gaming GPUs don't really work without them.) - And yet Nvidia allowed specific, cherry-picked reviewers to have early drivers anyhow if they agreed to a borderline unethical deal: they could only test five specific games, at 1080p resolution, with fixed graphics settings, against two weaker GPUs (the 3060 and 2060 Super) where the new card would be sure to win. - In some cases, Nvidia threatened to withhold future access unless reviewers published apples-to-oranges benchmark charts showing how the RTX 5060's "fake frames" MFG tech can produce more frames than earlier GPUs without it. Some reviewers apparently took Nvidia up on that proposition, leading to day-one "previews" where the charts looked positively stacked in the 5060's favor [...]. But the reality, according to reviews that have since hit the web, is that the RTX 5060 often fails to beat a four-year-old RTX 3060 Ti, frequently fails to beat a four-year-old 3070, and can sometimes get upstaged by Intel's cheaper $250 B580. And yet, the 5060's lackluster improvements are overshadowed by a juicier story: inexplicably, Nvidia decided to threaten GamersNexus' future access over its GPU coverage. Yes, the same GamersNexus that's developed a staunch reputation for defending consumers from predatory behavior, and just last month published a report on "GPU shrinkflation" that accused Nvidia of misleading marketing. Bad move! [...] Nvidia is within its rights to withhold access, of course. Nvidia doesn't have to send out graphics cards or grant interviews. It'll only do it if it's good for business. But the unspoken covenant of product reviews is that the press, as a whole, gets a chance to warn the public if a movie, video game, or GPU is not worth their money. It works both ways: the media also gets the chance to warn that a product is so good you might want to line up in advance. That unspoken rule is what Nvidia is trampling here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers have found malicious software that received more than 6,000 downloads from the NPM repository over a two-year span, in yet another discovery showing the hidden threats users of such open source archives face. Eight packages using names that closely mimicked those of widely used legitimate packages contained destructive payloads designed to corrupt or delete important data and crash systems, Kush Pandya, a researcher at security firm Socket, reported Thursday. The packages have been available for download for more than two years and accrued roughly 6,200 downloads over that time. "What makes this campaign particularly concerning is the diversity of attack vectors -- from subtle data corruption to aggressive system shutdowns and file deletion," Pandya wrote. "The packages were designed to target different parts of the JavaScript ecosystem with varied tactics." [...] Some of the payloads were limited to detonate only on specific dates in 2023, but in some cases a phase that was scheduled to begin in July of that year was given no termination date. Pandya said that means the threat remains persistent, although in an email he also wrote: "Since all activation dates have passed (June 2023-August 2024), any developer following normal package usage today would immediately trigger destructive payloads including system shutdowns, file deletion, and JavaScript prototype corruption." The list of malicious packages included js-bomb, js-hood, vite-plugin-bomb-extend, vite-plugin-bomb, vite-plugin-react-extend, vite-plugin-vue-extend, vue-plugin-bomb, and quill-image-downloader.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is testing AI-powered text generation in Notepad for Windows 11 Insiders with Copilot Plus PCs, allowing users to draft content from prompts or build on existing text through a right-click menu. The update also introduces Paint's AI sticker generator and Snipping Tool enhancements including automatic screenshot cropping. The Write feature requires Microsoft account sign-in and uses the same credit system as other Windows 11 AI features.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SteamOS 3.7 Stable Rolls Out With Updated Linux Kernel, Expanding AMD Handheld Support  Phoronix