AmiMoJo writes: Members of YouTube's gaming community are calling out the video hosting site for adding new regulations regarding profanity usage and violent content, disproportionately affecting gaming creators who produce unscripted videos such as let's plays of M-rated games. Worse, the policy is retroactively deeming their videos in violation of new rules and affecting their ability to make money on the platform.

The rule changes in question was originally made in November of 2022, and the blog post announcing it says that YouTube now treats all profanity equally (meaning "ass" is just as bad as "fuck"), and any usage of such in titles, thumbails, or in the first seven seconds of a video may result in complete demonetization. While you can swear after the first eight seconds, if you use profanity "consistently throughout the video" it may also be demonetized according to this new policy. The same restrictions apply to violent content, as well.

Previously, YouTube's violent content policy applied to images of real-world violence, though game violence is now specifically noted as of the November update. As for profanity, prior to this change, YouTube allowed creators to use what it describes as "moderate profanity" (it says "shit" and "bitch" fall under this category) in the first 30 seconds without fear of demonetization.

Initially mentioned during their Innovation 2022 opening keynote by Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, Intel has unveiled its highly anticipated 6 GHz out-of-the-box processor, the Core i9-13900KS. The Core i9-13900KS has 24-cores (8P+16E) within its hybrid architecture design of performance and efficiency cores, with the exact fundamental specifications of the Core i9-13900K, but with an impressive P-core turbo of up to 6 GHz. From a report: Based on Intel's Raptor Lake-S desktop series, Intel claims that the Core i9-13900KS is the first desktop processor to reach 6 GHz out of the box without overclocking. Available from today, the Core i9-13900KS has a slightly higher base TDP of 150 W (versus 125 on the 13900K), 36 MB of Intel's L3 smart cache, and is pre-binned through a unique selection process to ensure the Core i9-13900KS's special edition status for their highest level of frequency of 6 GHz in a desktop chip out of the box, without the need to overclock manually.

The Core i9-13900KS has been a long-awaited entrant to Intel's Raptor Lake-S for desktop series, with previous reports from Intel during their Innovation 2022 keynote that a 6 GHz out-of-the-box processor was on the horizon for this year. As Intel highlights, the Core i9-13900KS represents a significant milestone for desktop PCs, with its 6 GHz out-of-the-box P-Core turbo frequency. This makes it one of the fastest desktop x86 processors, at least from the perspective that users don't need to overclock anything to attain these ridiculous core frequencies. From Intel's sneak peek video on YouTube published on Jan 10th, the Core i9-13900KS looks to have reached 6 GHz on two of the eight performance (P) cores, with a clock speed of up to 5.6 GHz on the remaining six cores, which is very impressive.

One of the adjustments Intel needed to make to power limitations to achieve these frequencies is somewhat hazy. Intel hasn't specified if the Core i9-13900KS is a special binned part, but from previous KS launches, this has been the case, and it's expected that it is still the case. The reports of Core i9-13900K chips being overclocked to 6 GHz at ambient are few and far between, with only the best examples and those with very aggressive and premium ambient cooling solutions capable of this. [...] The Intel Core i9-13900KS is available to buy now at most retailers, with an MSRP of $699. This is $40 cheaper than the previous Core i9-12900KS ($739) that launched last year. Based on current MSRP pricing, the Core i9-13900KS is $110 more than the current Core i9-13900K.

Perhaps the biggest reason TVs have gotten so much cheaper than other products is that your TV is watching you and profiting off the data it collects. From a report: Modern TVs, with very few exceptions, are "smart," which means they come with software for streaming online content from Netflix, YouTube, and other services. Perhaps the most common media platform, Roku, now comes built into TVs made by companies including TCL, HiSense, Philips, and RCA. But there are many more operating systems: Google has Google TV, which is used by Sony, among other manufacturers, and LG and Samsung offer their own.

Smart TVs are just like search engines, social networks, and email providers that give us a free service in exchange for monitoring us and then selling that info to advertisers leveraging our data. These devices "are collecting information about what you're watching, how long you're watching it, and where you watch it," Willcox said, "then selling that data -- which is a revenue stream that didn't exist a couple of years ago." There's nothing particularly secretive about this -- data-tracking companies such as Inscape and Samba proudly brag right on their websites about the TV manufacturers they partner with and the data they amass.

The companies that manufacture televisions call this "post-purchase monetization," and it means they can sell TVs close to at cost and still make money over the long term by sharing viewing data. In addition to selling your viewing information to advertisers, smart TVs also show ads in the interface. Roku, for example, prominently features a given TV show or streaming service on the right-hand side of its home screen -- that's a paid advertisement. Roku also has its own ad-supported channel, the Roku Channel, and gets a cut of the video ads shown on other channels on Roku devices.

"Starting next year, Nintendo fans can step through a life-size warp pipe and enter the Mushroom Kingdom," reports Bloomberg, "for the first time on American soil."

Bloomberg shares its reaction after "an early preview tour of the land as it finalizes construction," noting that it has "a chirping soundtrack of cheerful instrumentals and distant coin clinks." Super Nintendo World, an interactive replica of Nintendo's dynamic lands and characters, will bring its colorful chaos to Universal Studios Hollywood when it opens on Feb. 17, 2023. The expansion provides an opportunity to race alongside Mario and Luigi before meeting them face to face, and it will bring video game-inspired dining, retail and merchandise to the California theme park inside an immersive, bowllike structure lined with spinning coins and turtle shells....

Whether Koopa Troopas in motion or a fake desert set against the actual skies, there's always something to look at — and somewhere intriguing to head first. Its marquee attraction, Mario Kart: Bowser's Challenge, puts riders in augmented reality-enabled helmets to experience the Mario Kart racing game firsthand while the challenge plays out virtually in front of them....

Super Nintendo World was released at Universal Studios Japan in March 2021, but its arrival stateside marks Universal Studio Hollywood's largest opening since its Wizarding World of Harry Potter expansion in 2016, and it's the first of Nintendo's notable footprints on domestic soil. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, starring Chris Pratt, hits theaters in April, and a third iteration of Super Nintendo World will open with Epic Universe, the all-new theme park arriving at Universal Orlando Resort in 2025.

In each iteration, the main draw is the Mario Kart experience. Here, riders in four-passenger vehicles will join Team Mario to compete across multiple courses for the Golden Cup — a familiar process to anyone who's played Nintendo's racing challenge back home.
The article reminds readers that "all attendees can punch blocks (with more force than one may anticipate) and re-create other moments in the Mushroom Kingdom."

But they ultimately describe the experience as a kind of "overwhelming immersion, transporting people to a location they've previously seen, but never before in real life."

CNN reports: Mars may seem like a dry, desolate place, but the red planet transforms into an otherworldly wonderland in winter, according to a new video shared by NASA....

"Enough snow falls that you could snowshoe across it," said Sylvain Piqueux, a Mars scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement from a NASA release. "If you were looking for skiing, though, you'd have to go into a crater or cliffside, where snow could build up on a sloped surface."

So far, no orbiters or rovers have been able to see snow fall on the red planet because the weather phenomenon only occurs at the poles beneath cloud cover at night. The cameras on the orbiters can't peer through the clouds, and no robotic explorers have been developed that could survive the freezing temperatures at the poles. [ -190 degrees Fahrenheit, or -123 degrees Celsius) ] However, the Mars Climate Sounder instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can detect light that's invisible to the human eye. It has made detections of carbon dioxide snow falling at the Martian poles. The Phoenix lander, which arrived on Mars in 2008, also used one of its laser instruments to detect water-ice snow from its spot about 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) away from the Martian north pole....

"Because carbon dioxide ice has a symmetry of four, we know dry-ice snowflakes would be cube-shaped," Piqueux said. "Thanks to the Mars Climate Sounder, we can tell these snowflakes would be smaller than the width of a human hair."

Ice and carbon dioxide-based frosts also form on Mars, and they can occur farther away from the poles. The Odyssey orbiter (which entered Mars' orbit in 2001) has watched frost forming and turning to a gas in the sunlight, while the Viking landers spotted icy frost on Mars when they arrived in the 1970s. At the end of winter, the season's buildup of ice can thaw and turn into gas, creating unique shapes that have reminded NASA scientists of Swiss cheese, Dalmatian spots, fried eggs, spiders and other unusual formations.
That's just the beginning, according to a press release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab: This "thawing" also causes geysers to erupt: Translucent ice allows sunlight to heat up gas underneath it, and that gas eventually bursts out, sending fans of dust onto the surface. Scientists have actually begun to study these fans as a way to learn more about which way Martian winds are blowing.
And they also note that the camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter also captured some surprisingly colorful images of sand dunes covered by frost

"Rapid chess" grants 15 minutes to each player for all moves (plus 10 seconds per move). "Blitz chess" grants each player three minutes (plus 2 seconds per move).

Now CNN reports that five-time world chess champion Magnus Carlsen "won both the World Rapid and World Blitz chess titles in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the latest landmark of his glittering career." The 32-year-old Norwegian is now the holder of all three world chess championship titles — in Classical, Rapid and Blitz — for the third time in his career, while no other player has ever won both the Rapid and Blitz titles in the same year.

"Gonna need more hands soon," Carlsen joked on Twitter, posting a video of himself counting his now 15 world titles on his fingers.

It caps a triumphant end to Carlsen's remarkable decade-long reign as the classical world champion, as he has already announced that he will not defend his title next year.
Chess24 reports that for his first three-minute match, Magnus Carlsen showed up two and a half minutes late — and starting with just 30 seconds left on his clock, still beat his opponent.

An anonymous reader shares a report: New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the Digital Fair Repair Act on December 28th, 2022, and the law will go into effect on July 1st, 2023 -- a full year after it was originally passed by the NY State legislature. The bill establishes that consumers and independent repair providers have a right to obtain manuals, diagrams, diagnostics and parts from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in order to repair their own devices. However, the bill was meaningfully compromised at the last minute by amendments that give OEMs some convenient exceptions and loopholes to get out of obligations that many right to repair advocates had been hoping for.

One of the most controversial adjustments in the signed law is that it allows OEMs to sell assemblies of parts instead of individual components if they choose to. The bill also won't require OEMs to provide "passwords, security codes or materials" to bypass security features, which is sometimes necessary to do to save a locked, but otherwise functionally fine device. This makes the bill "functionally useless," according to Louis Rossmann, a repair technician who has been a fierce advocate of toothy right to repair legislation. Rossmann responded today to the amended bill with a video full of detailed analysis and criticism. Hochul claims in her signed memorandum that the bill was amended to lessen the risk of physical harm or security issues while making repairs, an amendment that Rossman calls "bullshit" and expects manufacturers to exploit in circumvention of the spirit of the bill.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Hackaday: Stabilizing an inverted pendulum is a classic problem in control theory, and if you've ever taken a control systems class you might remember seeing pages full of differential equations and bode diagrams just to describe its basic operation. Although this might make such a system seem terribly complicated, actually implementing all of that theory doesn't have to be difficult at all, as [Limenitis Reducta] demonstrates in his latest project. All you need is a 3D printer, some basic electronic skills and knowledge of Python. The components needed are a body, two wheels, motors to drive those wheels and some electronics. [Limenitis] demonstrates the design process in the video [here] (in Turkish, with English subtitles available) in which he draws the entire system in Fusion 360 and then proceeds to manufacture it. The body and wheels are 3D-printed, with rubber bands providing some traction to the wheels which would otherwise have difficulty on slippery surfaces.

Two stepper motors drive the wheels, controlled by a DRV8825 motor driver, while an MPU-9250 accelerometer and gyroscope unit measures the angle and acceleration of the system. The loop is closed by a Raspberry Pi Pico that implements a PID controller: another control theory classic, in which the proportional, integral and derivative parameters are tuned to adapt the control loop to the physical system in question. External inputs can be provided through a Bluetooth connection, which makes it possible to control the robot from a PC or smartphone and guide it around your living room. All design files and software are available on Limenitis' GitHub page.

Tumblr is adding support for livestreaming via the video platform Livebox. The Verge reports: Tumblr has supported streaming in the past, but it did so by letting people share streams from other services like YouNow and YouTube. The new option is described as a native Tumblr streaming service powered by Livebox. (Livebox is operated by the Meet Group, a subsidiary of the dating app company ParshipMeet Group.) Livebox allows users to tip streamers, and by the same token, Tumblr will let you pay creators in a virtual currency called "Diamonds." Livebox provides AI- and human-powered moderation for streams, according to a press release; the service also lets streamers designate trusted viewers as moderators. The streaming service is so far only supported for people's primary Tumblr blog, not any side blogs under the same account.

The feature is being rolled out to US users on iOS and Android now, and a release for global users and the desktop site is planned for the future. More details are outlined in a blog post, which dubs the service Tumblr Live.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Pine64, makers of ARM-based, tinker-friendly gadgets, is making the PineTab 2, a sequel to its Linux-powered tablet that mostly got swallowed up by the pandemic and its dire global manufacturing shortages. The PineTab 2, as described in Pine64's "December Update," is based around the RK3566, made by RockChip. Pine64 based its Quartz64 single-board system on the system-on-a-chip (SoC), and has all but gushed about it across several blog posts. It's "a dream-of-a-SoC," writes Community Director Lukasz Erecinski, a "modern mid-range quad-core Cortex-A55 processor that integrates a Mali-G52 MP2 GPU. And it should be ideal for space-constrained devices: it runs cool, has a variety of I/O options, solid price-to-performance ratio, and "is genuinely future-proof."

The PineTab 2 is a complete redesign, Erecinski claims. It has a metal chassis that "is very sturdy while also being easy to disassemble for upgrades, maintenance, and repair." The tablet comes apart with snap-in tabs, and Pine64 will offer replacement parts. The insides are modular, too, with the eMMC storage, camera, daughter-board, battery, and keyboard connector all removable "in under 5 minutes." The 10.1-inch IPS display, with "modern and reasonably thin bezels," should also be replaceable, albeit with more work. On that easily opened chassis are two USB-C ports, one for USB 3.0 I/O and one for charging (or USB 2.0 if you want). There's a dedicated micro-HDMI port, and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera and rear-facing 5-megapixel (not the kind of all-in-one media production machine Apple advertises, this tablet), a microSD slot, and a headphone jack. While a PCIe system is exposed inside the PineTab, most NVMe SSDs will not fit, according to Pine64. All of this is subject to change before final production, however.

As with the original PineTab, this model comes with a detachable, backlit keyboard cover, included by default. That makes supporting a desktop OS for the device far more viable, Erecinski writes. The firmware chipset is the same as in the PineBook Pro, which should help with that. No default OS has been decided as of yet, according to Pine64. The tablet should ship with two memory/storage variants, 4GB/64GB and 8GB/128GB. It's due to ship "sometime after the Chinese New Year" (January 22 to February 5), though there's no firm date. No price was announced, but "it will be affordable regardless of which version you'll settle on." A video version of the "December Update" can be found on YouTube.

Tesla has launched Steam integration inside its Model S and Model X electric cars with thousands of games now playable. Electrek reports: Today, Tesla launched Steam Beta for Model S and Model X as part of its "holiday update." We reported all the details of Tesla's holiday update earlier today for most Tesla vehicles, but the Steam integration is only for the refreshed Model S and Model X produced over the last two years. That's because Tesla's two flagship vehicles are equipped with a more powerful entertainment computer designed for video games.

With the unveiling of the new Model S and Model X, Tesla announced the new gaming computer: "Up to 10 teraflops of processing power enables in-car gaming on-par with today's newest consoles via Tesla Arcade. Wireless controller compatibility allows gaming from any seat." A known chip leaker, Patrick Schur, posted a diagram of Tesla's new gaming computer powered by the AMD Navi 23 GPU. The system is integrated and connects directly to two touchscreens inside the Model S and Model X to play games, watch entertainment, and perform other functions. Musk also revealed that the new computer has more storage space to be able to handle more games on the platform at the same time, which is going to be useful to handle your Steam library. The holiday update also brings support for Apple Music, an update to Dog Mode, improvements to Tesla's "Light Show" feature, and a bunch of smaller features/updates.

It was 29 years ago today that DOOM was first released — and we're still using it! Here in 2022, the latest mod reportedly converts its demons into the zombies and creepers from Minecraft. This week Hackaday wrote about a simple emulated RISC-V processor that runs DOOM. Last month someone even got DOOM running in Notepad. And recently WebTV enthusiasts not only jerry-rigged a contemporary TV to a WebTV unit, but then actually got it to play a 1990s-era WebTV version of DOOM on their TV screen.

The last 29 years have been a long, strange trip. A hidden Doom level appeared in Microsoft Excel. A Doom video was also used to promote Windows 95. And then there was that weird Doom movie starring The Rock and Karl Urban... By 2015 Doom was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. In 2016 John Romero created a new level. Later that year a new release of Doom even featured a mod with one of the the original Doom II levels from 1994.

In 2016 we'd asked Slashdot readers to share their own favorite stories about Doom — and the best thing about that post is those 351 comments. ("I went to the door, confused why the police were banging on my door.... They said they had reports of shots being fired." )

Is anyone still playing Doom today? Share your own thoughts and memories in the comments.

And what's your own favorite story about Doom?

A Japanese billionaire picked his crewmates for the first-ever artist-centered mission. Space.com reports: Yusaku Maezawa, who made his fortune as an online fashion retailer, announced the eight people who would be flying with him on the dearMoon mission, which aims to use a SpaceX Starship to fly around the moon as soon as next year. "I hope each and every one will recognize the responsibility that comes with leaving the Earth, travelling to the moon and back," Maezawa says in the video in Japanese, with a translation provided in-video.

Riding along with Maezawa will be:
- Steve Aoki, D.J., producer and electronic dance music artist with several Billboard-charting studio albums;
- Tim Dodd, YouTube creator of the "Everyday Astronaut" channel (Dodd has interviewed SpaceX founder Elon Musk multiple times on camera);
- Yemi A.D., artist and choreographer known for his work with JAD Dance Company and with Ye (formerly Kanye West);
- Karim Iliya, photographer whose publications include National Geographic Magazine;
- Rhiannon Adam, a photographer who has been supported by the BBC/Royal Geographical Society and won multiple awards, according to their website;
- Brendan Hall, filmmaker on projects such as the two-hour documentary "Blood Sugar Rising" about diabetes in the United States, according to the Internet Movie Database;
- Dev Joshi, an "Indian television actor known for portraying the role of Baal Veer in Sony Sab's Baal Veer and Baalveer Returns," according to the Internet Movie Database;
- T.O.P., a South Korean rapper known as the lead for the boy band Big Bang;
- Two backup members: dancer Miyu, and snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington.

Each member of the dearMoon crew was briefly quoted in a video from the dearMoon YouTube channel, and the announcement was confirmed on Dodd's and Maezawa's Twitter feeds.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The Blender Institute develops Blender, a free and open source 3D graphics tool used to create animated films. Sintel and Big Buck Bunny are among Blender's most recognizable titles and due to Creative Commons licensing (CC BY), they are widely shared, used, remixed and reshared. According to original Blender creator Ton Roosendaal, "Open licenses are essential for sharing our films and their source material." Right now, a company is claiming that Blender's free content is actually their content and as a result, must be immediately removed from the internet. We're talking about content that was created with Blender's explicit blessing but even after multiple appeals, not even YouTube will see reason.

Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz is the co-founder and CTO at AI-focused driver safety company, Nexar. On Sunday he informed TorrentFreak that he's also an independent film composer and producer, working with music production libraries, and distributing to the main music platforms. TorrentFreak contacted Bruno after noticing a post he made on a music production forum. He wrote that after uploading a video containing a clip from the Blender movie Caminandes 3 -- Llamigos, YouTube notified him that a rightsholder had filed a copyright complaint, his video had been taken down, and a copyright strike had been issued to his account. The complaint, sent by Uzbekistan-based media/news company ZO'R TV, was not the result of automatic matching under Content ID. It was filed as a formal DMCA notice, meaning that someone probably reviewed the details before sending the complaint. The notice claimed that Bruno had infringed ZO'R TV's copyrights by reproducing content (6:21 to 8:26) from this YouTube video published in 2018.

Since the content in question is obviously from Blender's film Caminandes 3, ZO'R TV was in no position to issue a DMCA notice. On that basis, Bruno followed the recognized procedure by sending a DMCA counternotice to YouTube. It didn't go well. After filing his counternotice with YouTube, Bruno was informed that since he'd provided insufficient information, YouTube could not process it. However, YouTube did inform Bruno of the risks of filing a counternotice, including that his name could be sent to the claimant, ZO'R TV in this case. Determined to have his video restored, Bruno accepted the risks and sent another counternotice to YouTube. This time there was no indication that the counternotice was deficient. YouTube thanked him for filing it -- but still declined to process it. YouTube's email advised Bruno that counternotices should only be filed in case of a mistake or misidentification. Consulting with a lawyer first might be helpful, YouTube added. After three attempts to restore the video and have the copyright strike removed, YouTube responded once again. The message contained yet more disappointment for Bruno. "Based on the information that you have provided, it appears that you do not have the necessary rights to post the content on YouTube. Therefore, we regretfully cannot honor your request," it advised. This signaled the end of the debate as far as YouTube was concerned and by rejecting Bruno's right to send a counternotice, the platform denied him an opportunity to have the video restored, stand up for Blender's rights, and get the strike removed. After notifying Blender of the situation, Blender developed Ton Roosendaal replied, saying the company has "no staff here available to go after situations like this" but suggested they could "escalate it to the Creative Commons organization."

"After all, it's their mission," he added.

Around 2009 Slashdot was abuzz about how over-the-air broadcasting in North America was switching to a new standard called DTV. (Fun fact: North America and South America have two entirely different broadcast TV standards — both of which are different from the DVB-T standard used in Europe/Africa/Australia.) But 2022 ends with us already talking about DTV's successor in North America: the new broadcast standard NextGen TV.

This time the new standard isn't mandatory for TV stations, CNET points out — and it won't affect cable, satellite or streaming TV. But now even if you're not paying for a streaming TV service, another article points out, in most major American cities "an inexpensive antenna is all you'll need to get get ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS stations" — and often with a better picture quality: NextGen TV, formerly known as ATSC 3.0, is continuing to roll out across the U.S. It's already widely available, with stations throughout the country broadcasting in the new standard. There are many new TVs with compatible tuners plus several stand-alone tuners to add NextGen to just about any TV. As the name suggests, NextGen TV is the next generation of over-the-air broadcasts, replacing or supplementing the free HD broadcasts we've had for over two decades. NextGen not only improves on HDTV, but adds the potential for new features like free over-the-air 4K and HDR, though those aren't yet widely available.

Even so, the image quality with NextGen is likely better than what you're used to from streaming or even cable/satellite. If you already have an antenna and watch HD broadcasts, the reception you get with NextGen might be better, too.... Because of how it works, you'll likely get better reception if you're far from the TV tower.

The short version is: NextGen is free over-the-air television with potentially more channels and better image quality than older over-the-air broadcasts.
U.S. broadcast companies have also created a site at WatchNextGenTV.com showing options for purchasing a compatible new TV. That site also features a video touting NextGen TV's "brilliant colors and a sharper picture with a wider range of contrast" and its Dolby audio system (with "immersive, movie theatre-quality sound" with enhancements for voice and dialogue "so you get all of the story.") And in the video there's also examples of upcoming interactive features like on-screen quizzes, voting, and shopping, as well as the ability to select multiple camera angles or different audio tracks.

"One potential downside? ATSC 3.0 will also let broadcasters track your viewing habits," CNet reported earlier this year, calling the data "information that can be used for targeted advertising, just like companies such as Facebook and Google use today...

"Ads specific to your viewing habits, income level and even ethnicity (presumed by your neighborhood, for example) could get slotted in by your local station.... but here's the thing: If your TV is connected to the internet, it's already tracking you. Pretty much every app, streaming service, smart TV and cable or satellite box all track your usage to a greater or lesser extent."

But on the plus side... NextGen TV is IP-based, so in practice it can be moved around your home just like any internet content can right now. For example, you connect an antenna to a tuner box inside your home, but that box is not connected to your TV at all. Instead, it's connected to your router. This means anything with access to your network can have access to over-the-air TV, be it your TV, your phone, your tablet or even a streaming device like Apple TV....

This also means it's possible we'll see mobile devices with built-in tuners, so you can watch live TV while you're out and about, like you can with Netflix and YouTube now. How willing phone companies will be to put tuners in their phones remains to be seen, however. You don't see a lot of phones that can get radio broadcasts now, even though such a thing is easy to implement.
But whatever you think — it's already here. By August NextGen TV was already reaching half of America's population, according to a press release from a U.S. broadcaster's coalition. That press release also bragged that 40% of consumers had actually heard of NextGen TV — "up 25% from last year among those in markets where it is available."

You can read the news in Military Times magazine. "Coming just after the 25th anniversary of the release of the cult classic Starship Troopers (November 1997), Offworld Industries and Sony Pictures Consumer Projects are bringing the fight against the Arachnids to a computer near you."

An official announcement and gameplay teaser were released for the upcoming game this week. "Starship Troopers: Extermination is a co-op FPS that puts you on the far-off front lines of an all-out battle against the Bugs!" explains its page on Steam. "Squad up, grab your rifle, and do your part as an elite Deep Space Vanguard Trooper set to take back planets claimed by the Arachnid threat!"

The page says an "Early Access" launch is planned for 2023: In Starship Troopers: Extermination, our vision is to show a galactic war between the Federation and the Arachnid Empire. After our initial launch and throughout the course of Early Access development, players will get to engage with exciting new updates that expand upon the in-game universe, and provide feedback through the Steam Community Hub that our developers can take into consideration.... [W]e will be sharing an exciting and robust roadmap with content already planned for 2023. Throughout Early Access we will provide players with more weapons, an updated class leveling system as well as progression achievements and unlockable skins for both weapons and armor. Additionally we will be adding vehicles special call in attacks including massive Orbital Strikes to help during missions. On the enemy side we will be adding more bugs, flying enemies, and boss battles that require complex player coordination to accomplish.

As we progress in development, our goal is to then begin ongoing planetary battles where the player can explore new items and enemies introduced in previous updates as an epic war breaks out. This transition adds a new world as we head to the completion of Early Access. The intent throughout Early Access is to convey that this part of our development cycle is the beginning of the war and the battle will only increase in complexity and ferocity as we move to full release.

Starship Troopers: Extermination is expected to be in Early Access for approximately 1 year. The full version of Starship Troopers: Extermination will span multiple worlds to liberate them from the Arachnid Threat. This will include additional weapons, enemies types, class progression upgrades, community events, and encounters. The player will have a more diverse roster of customization options allowing them to tailor their Troopers to fit their playstyle and experience." Starship Troopers: Extermination will launch with a massive map on Planet Valaka. Up to twelve players can team up to complete side and main missions before escaping to the extraction zone. We'll have more to share closer to the Early Access launch in 2023!

We plan to work closely with the community on Steam's Community Hub and in the official Starship Troopers: Extermination Discord as we add features, tune gameplay, and develop new content.
"Starship Troopers is in a league of its own when it comes to 90s science fiction films," writes Boing Boing's Devin Nealy. "Despite serving as an adaptation of the Robert A. Heinlein book, Starship Troopers forges a unique identity through its striking visuals and deft use of satire."

Noting the two "pretty weak" straight-to-video sequels (and two more CGI-animated films), Nealy argues that "Until the franchise finds a creative team that can properly capture the essence of the first film, a video game might be the best option for the series."

Huawei has confirmed the existence of a smartwatch it's working on featuring a pair of built-in wireless earbuds. "Huawei's account on Chinese Twitter-like site Weibo announced the existence of the device on Wednesday and promised all would be revealed on December 2," reports The Register. "But Huawei has since postponed its Winter 2022 consumer kit launch for unexplained reasons." You can view a teaser video on YouTube. The Verge adds: As the name suggests, the Huawei Watch Buds are a pair of earbuds concealed within a smartwatch that looks similar to the Huawei Watch 3. Details are a little sparse so there's no word yet on what kind of performance or battery life you can expect from either of the products, but the watch itself does appear to be running HarmonyOS.

The earbuds don't seem to resemble any previous Huawei products, sporting a bare-bones black and silver design. While the concept feels more than a little gimmicky, it could be a neat solution for runners and other sporty folks who don't want to carry a separate earbud case during a workout. (If they don't mind the extra bulk on their wrists.) [...] Addressing the elephant in the room, it's unlikely that you'll be able to buy this wacky gadget in the US anyway, regardless of its legitimacy. Huawei products have been effectively banned in the country since the company was placed on the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security Entity list in 2019.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Motility -- the scientific term for being able to move independently -- is one of the most important features for living organisms on Earth. But where cells' ability to move came from has been a mystery for many scientists. However, new research in which scientists created the world's smallest moving organism provides one idea of how cell motility came to be. As the authors write in their paper, "motility is observed in various phyla and arguably one of the major determinants of survival." According to the paper, cell motility is believed to originate from small movements of housekeeping proteins that are transmitted to a cell, but the proposed process hasn't been experimentally demonstrated. Their study is thus a way to test out this theory.

In this experiment, the researchers genetically engineered a synthetic bacterium named JCVI-syn-3b, or syn-3, which is non-motile. To reconstitute syn-3, the group introduced seven genes that code for proteins that are likely involved in the swimming motion of Spiroplasma bacteria. Spiroplasma is a small bacteria known to "swim" by essentially switching around its cytoskeleton. The proteins introduced evolved from the bacterial actin protein MreB. Actin are multi-functional proteins that are often responsible for motility in cells. In an email to Motherboard, Miyata confirmed that prior to this experiment, nobody had succeeded in making a motile minimal synthetic bacterium. By introducing the proteins responsible for motility in Spiroplasma into syn-3, the researchers were able to make the previously non-motile bacteria swim, as evident in a video published on the University's YouTube account.

The researchers also wanted to see how the expression of different combinations of the motility genes would affect the genetically engineered bacteria to swim. In doing so, they found that the expression of only two proteins was necessary for promoting motility in syn-3, likely indicating that many of the proteins were redundant and demonstrating a minimal system for motility. "To the best of our knowledge, the motility system comprising only two actin superfamily proteins is the smallest system established till date," the authors write. "Therefore, we may call this a 'minimal motile cell.'" Although this study is primarily a proof of concept, it gives scientists a better understanding of how cell motility could have potentially originated and evolved. "In addition to the sheer novelty of creating such a smol swimmer, the new study sheds light on the origin of movement in the first mobile lifeforms that arose on Earth," adds Motherboard. "For instance, Miyata said that the actin protein MreB is not involved in the motility of many other bacterial species, which confirms that there are multiple different evolutionary pathways that led to microbial movement."

The study has been published in the journal Science Advances.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: The "cord cutting" phenomenon the cable and broadcast sector long denied or downplayed simply shows no sign of slowing down. According to the latest data by Leichtman Research, the top U.S. pay TV companies lost another 785,000 subscribers last quarter as younger Americans continue to shift to streaming video, over the air antennas, or free services like TikTok and YouTube. While alternative pay TV services (streaming on demand and live streaming) services saw a 701,000 subscriber jump during the third quarter, traditional cable companies lost an estimated 981,674 subscribers depart for greener pastures. Phone companies (AT&T, Verizon) and traditional satellite TV companies (DirecTV, Dish) lost 701,000 paying subscribers during the quarter.

Leichtman's analysis never really answers why consumers continue to flee traditional cable (high prices, bloated channel bundles, bullshit fees, comically terrible customer service), instead only focusing on the fact that this was the third best quarter for streaming services in history: "Spurred by a strong quarter from Internet-delivered vMVPD services, pay-TV net losses of about 785,000 in 3Q 2022 were more modest than in the first two quarters of the year," said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. "Not including YouTube TV, which does not regularly report subscriber totals, vMVPDs had nearly 900,000 net additions in the quarter. This was the third most quarterly net adds ever for the top publicly reporting vMVPD services."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Bohemia Interactive, the Czech Republic based developer of the military simulator game Arma 3, has published a blog and a video it hopes will help it with a unique problem. Footage from the video game known for its realism has gone viral several times since the game's release in 2013 as people have tried to pass off clips of the military simulation as footage of real war. This happens a lot, so often that there are multiple debunking stories on Reuters and the Associated Press specifically about debunking viral clips of war footage. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, the problem has gotten much worse. The invasion is the largest ground war in Europe in a generation and people around the world gobble up every scrap of information they can. Pranksters and fraudsters have taken to uploading clips from Arma 3 to capitalize on that need for information.

Arma 3 is a hyper realistic military simulation and sandbox. It's meant to be a realistic modeling of real world conflict. It's even teamed up with the International Committee of the Red Cross to release DLC that details the after effects of armed conflict. A sister studio, Bohemia Interactive Simulations, broke from the company in 2013 and makes simulations for the Pentagon using similar technology. The game is also a sandbox with a vibrant modding scene (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds began its life as an Arma 3 mod) that allows players to customize the game however they want. That devotion to realism and open platform has made Arma 3 the perfect platform to use to create fake war footage. "While it's flattering that Arma 3 simulates modern war conflicts in such a realistic way, we are certainly not pleased that it can be mistaken for real-life combat footage and used as war propaganda," Pavel Krizka, PR Manager of Bohemia Interactive, said in a November 28 press release. "It has happened in the past (Arma 3 videos allegedly depicted conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, and even between India and Pakistan), but nowadays this content has gained traction in regard to the current conflict in Ukraine."

The life cycle is almost always the same. An Arma 3 nerd uploads something to YouTube and other people pull the video, edit it to make it look more realistic, then pass it off as actual footage of the conflict. The footage goes viral then the fact-checkers come in and tell everyone it's a video game. Bohemia Interactive issues a statement and then everyone waits for the next fake to come along. "We've been trying to fight against such content by flagging these videos to platform providers (FB, YT, TW, IG etc.), but it's very ineffective," Krizka said in the press release. "With every video taken down, ten more are uploaded each day. We found the best way to tackle this is to actively cooperate with leading media outlets and fact-checkers (such as AFP, Reuters, and others), who have better reach and the capacity to fight the spreading of fake news footage effectively." Some of the tells of fake footage include a low resolution, a shaky camera, and/or a night setting. "They're often without sound, don't feature people in motion, and sometimes still include the HUD elements from the video game," adds Motherboard. "There's typically unnatural particle effects, unrealistic vehicles, uniforms, and equipment."

"We have seen many Arma players pointing out mistakenly identified footage, which helps viewers understand what they're seeing," said Bohemia Interactive. "Thank you for helping!"