AI chatbots and large language models are little more than ‘glorified tape recorders’-

Let’s face it, humans have a natural tendency to fear the unknown. The Terminator, The Matrix, and movies like them have implanted the seed that AI is bad. Killer cyborgs and malevolent AI have become a part of the public consciousness. The rise of the AI industry has even led to extinction level concerns… from the AI industry.

But don’t go stocking up on ammo and baked beans just yet. Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center believes current AI models are little more than glorified tape recorders.

Kaku was interviewed by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria (via Business Insider). When asked for his thoughts on AI, Kaku said: “It takes snippets of what’s on the web created by a human, splices them together, and passes it off as if it created these things, and people are saying: ‘Oh my God, it’s a human, it’s humanlike.'” He goes on to say “AI cannot distinguish true from false”.

I find it hard to argue with his lo…

Overwatch confirms Christ Jesus is better at deflecting missiles than ninja-cyborg Genji-

An Overwatch player messing around outside the boundaries of the map has discovered that the statue of Jesus Christ on Rio de Janeiro map Paraíso miraculously reflects all projectiles aimed at it with unerring accuracy. This is as opposed to Overwatch’s vaunted cyborg-ninja Genji, whose ability to deflect projectiles lasts at most a mere two seconds and must be used by players with perfect timing. The discovery was posted by user OmicronGaming to Reddit.

The Jesus statue on Paraiso (OoB) deflects any projectiles that are shot at it with an invisible barrier from r/Overwatch

The explanation for this is of course that it is a miracle, an act of divine providence by God to protect the world-famous statue Christ the Redeemer, or Cristo Redentor in the local Portuguese language.

Indeed, as evinced in the video, Christ’s divine protection extends not just to the statue itself but to the mountain it sits upon, Corcovado. In the…

The demo for poker-based roguelike Balatro returns today with nearly 40 new jokers—plus a full release date in February-

I had some big gaming plans for the holiday break this year: I was finally going to start a second playthrough of Red Dead Redemption 2, build a new city in Farthest Frontier, and grab some friends to dive into Lethal Company.

I didn’t do any of that. Instead, I just played poker-inspired deckbuilder Balatro. Every single day I sat on the couch with my Steam Deck and played it for at least a couple hours. And it wasn’t even the full game, just the demo, which I still managed to sink 30 hours into. That meant I was pretty bummed when that awesome demo got pulled off Steam by its developer, LocalThunk, on January 1.

Today I’m firing my Steam Deck up again because that deckbuilder demo is suddenly back, and it’s got a ton of new cards for you to try out—including nearly 40 brand new jokers. Even better, along with the return of the demo, LocalThunk’s poker roguelike also has a launch date: Balatro will release on February 20. Here’s the new trailer:

To quickly s…

One of the most influential FPS games inspired the new map in Overwatch 2 season 4-

Overwatch developers have cited Quake as an inspiration for the hero shooter’s design for years. It has jump pads and a hero who can rocket jump. But in its upcoming season, it’ll finally have an entire map that looks like it was ripped straight out of the classic arena shooter.

Earlier this year, Blizzard held a Twitch stream where viewers helped design a map for the game’s goofy arcade modes. That map, called Talantis, will be fully playable in a limited-time arcade mode starting on April 25.

Talantis is an underwater map consisting of suspended platforms and jump pads that can fling you between them. It’s Quake’s The Longest Yard map, but with giant fish circling around it. No matter where you go on it, you’re always a few steps away from falling into the abyss. Lucio and Wrecking Ball players keen on booping enemies off the edge will surely thrive here.

Season 4 will have a space opera-themed battle pass, including a customizable Galactic Emperor mythic skin fo…

This is the most demanding PC game in terms of GPU power ‘and for a long time it had no graphics’-

One of our favourite pieces from the past 12 months. Originally published 22 July, 2022.

It takes a whole lot of GPU power to run today’s most powerful AI models. Even the most extreme gaming PC build wouldn’t be able to handle the kind of oomph needed to get the best AI Dungeon models up and running. In order for Latitude to power what’s essentially this less numbers-heavy, more free and creative online D&D campaign, you’d need something truly beastly.

According to Nick Walton, the CEO of Latitude and the software engineer who helped design the initial code for the D&D-inspired story generator, “If you wanted to run the largest AI for AI dungeon, you would need not just a high-powered GPU, but a cluster of eight or 16 massive high-powered GPUs.” Even those would need to be more powerful than the best graphics cards on the consumer market.

Language models such as AI Dungeon’s Dragon experience, based on the 178 billion par…

Today’s Wordle hint and answer #815- Tuesday, September 12-

All the help you need to solve today’s Wordle is on this very page, whether you’re after a quick brush-up of your general skills or an easy win. There are tips, a clue written for the September 12 (815) puzzle, and of course, today’s Wordle answer ready and waiting to go.

Today’s puzzle turned out to be a real rollercoaster of emotions for me, veering from utter despair to four green letters, then from four green letters to please be the answer please oh thank goodness. Never has being almost completely right been so very wrong. Let’s hope tomorrow’s Wordle isn’t quite so stressful.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Tuesday, September 12

If you were cooking or baking and needed to beat lots of air into some eggs, you’d probably use today’s answer to do so. This word can also mean to quickly take someone or something away to another place too. There’s only a single vowel to find today. 

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Is ther…

The guy who sued Amazon for infringing on his Lord of the Rings fanfic takes a massive L, now owes $134,000 to the Tolkien Estate-

Remember the guy with the balls so big he sued Amazon and JRR Tolkien’s grandson, claiming they infringed on his Lord of the Rings fanfic with the Rings of Power TV series? In a shocking turn of events that no one (except literally everyone) saw coming, he lost badly and now owes the Tolkien estate $134,000 in legal fees.

The whole thing began back in 2017 when Demetrious Polychron registered his book, “The Fellowship of the King,” with the US Copyright office. He then sent a letter to Simon Tolkien, director of the Tolkien Estate and grandson of Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien, describing the book and requesting a review of the manuscript.

After receiving no response, he hired a lawyer in 2019 and contacted the Tolkien Estate again with another proposal to collaborate on the project. The estate quickly said “no,” at which point he personally delivered a copy of his manuscript to Simon Tolkien’s home for consideration. 

When that also went ignore…

Twitch changes its mind about nude art after just 48 hours- ‘We went too far’-

Twitch has taken back a rule change it made just two days ago. After seeing what some streamers did with the freedom to stream “artistic depictions of nudity,” the site said it “went too far.”

The change was one of several adjustments to Twitch’s policies on sexual content and nudity made on Wednesday, and lifted a ban on “drawn, animated, or sculpted” depictions of breasts and genitals. The adjustment was intended to permit Twitch’s community of visual artists to share their depictions of the human figure.

Some of the spicy streams that followed violated even the relaxed rules, says Twitch. (Depictions of “fictionalized sexual acts” were still prohibited, for example.) But some of the imagery that was allowed under the new guidelines was “met with community concern,” the company said in a blog post today. 

Dexerto, for instance, declared that Twitch’s art category had been “overrun by explicit furry and anime content,” although that’s not what Twitch specific…

Intel has made ‘a tremendous amount of fixes for compatibility’ in its Battlemage GPU architecture to ensure games run as they should-

Intel’s next graphics architecture, Xe2, will be more widely compatible with games and less clunky, says Intel Fellow Tom Petersen. The improvements announced so far for Xe2 include many specifically designed to correct issues widely reported with current Arc discrete graphics cards. But they’re also designed to and put it in line with the more popular architecture of the day. 

The new Xe2 architecture powering Intel’s latest Lunar Lake processors is the same as what’s set to arrive inside its Battlemage graphics cards. We’re still none the wiser as to when Battlemage will be released, though Lunar Lake is coming later this year, in Q3. 

Over at a Lunar Lake event, Petersen has spoken about what we can expect from the forthcoming graphics architecture: “When you think back to Alchemist, and as new games launch, we have a lot of issues and we require lots of bug fixes and driver fixes. And DX9 specifically needs a lot of work.

“We’ve made a tremendous amou…

Today’s Wordle answer for Thursday, May 16-

Whether you’re just about to start today’s Wordle or one line away from disaster, you’ll find everything you need to win right here. Find a fresh angle with our general tips and tricks, guide your guesses with a clue for the May 16 (1062) game, or turn everything around in an instant with today’s answer.

My first two guesses didn’t look like much: a pair of yellow letters surrounded by grey boxes and nothing more. But today they were all I needed to win, my third attempt turning everything a winning shade of green in an instant. What a great game.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Thursday, May 16

To hold someone or something up, especially if you’re trying to buy time. You might also use this word when a car’s engine suddenly stops—or even to describe a market trader’s stand.  

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Is there a double letter in Wordle today? 

Yes, there is a double letter in today’s puzzle. 

Word…