Self-driving Waymo cars keep SF residents awake all night by honking at each other

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• August 13, 2024

Haunted by glitching algorithms, self-driving cars disturb the peace in San Francisco.

Kamala Harris’ Rally Crowds Aren’t AI-Generated. Here’s How You Can Tell

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• August 13, 2024

Conspiracy theories have shot up around images of surging crowds for Harris-Walz campaign events. But all it takes is a little research to prove the photos are real.

Valve’s new game racks up 22K concurrent players, without officially existing

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• August 13, 2024

Valve’s next game, which has yet to be officially announced, had over 16,000 concurrent players over the weekend. As of this writing, that number sits at 22,400 via SteamDB. The game is called Deadlock and we’ve known that Valve was working on it for a while, but now it seems as though we are in the midst of a soft launch of some kind.

Again, this game hasn’t been officially announced by the company, though something’s certainly going on. It’s likely that Valve has opened the game up to play tests to gauge how successful the title could be with a proper PR push behind it, as indicated by Eurogamer and others. These numbers are certainly impressive considering, you know, Deadlock has yet to be confirmed by the company.

So what is Deadlock? It’s a competitive MOBA shooter, billed as “the next Dota” by veteran Valve reporter Tyler McVicker. It’s reported to have been in development since 2018 and is a partnership with IceFrog, an unnamed creator who was originally behind the original Defense of the Ancients mod of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos that started all of the Dota mania.

By all accounts, Deadlock is already in an advanced state of development, given the robust concurrent player count. McVicker describes it as looking “like Valorant, Overwatch, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 had a baby.”

After this article was originally published, an Engadget writer got an invite to the playtest, and can confirm many of the details leaked about the game. There are currently 20 heroes to choose from, and you can enter a sandbox mode to try each of them out. You're also able to browse ongoing matches to spectate and get a better feel for things before you're ready to dive in. The playtest build shows that the servers are open every day, for at least 12 hours each day.

While Valve hasn’t officially announced Deadlock, likely waiting for a surprise drop of some kind, the company did trademark the name back in June. So that’s something. With over 22,000 concurrents, it won’t be long before we all know a lot more about this game.

Update, August 13, 3:30PM ET: This story was updated after publishing with a brief explanation of what Valve's Deadlock playtest entails. The number of concurrent players in the headline and article was also updated to reflect the game's current player count. The original article stated there were over 16,000 players.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valves-new-game-racks-up-16k-concurrent-players-without-officially-existing-184342450.html?src=rss

Why cricket’s latest bowling technique is so effective against batters

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• August 13, 2024

Wind tunnel experiments show how the ball’s transverse spin impacts pressure fields.

The 42 Best Shows on Hulu Right Now (August 2024)

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• August 13, 2024

The Bear, Futurama, and Solar Opposites just a few of the shows you should be watching on Hulu this month.

Ex-Twitter staffer wins $600K over Musk’s click-yes-or-resign ultimatum

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• August 13, 2024

Elon Musk’s 24-hour email ultimatum unfairly dismissed Twitter staff, court says.

Thousands of People Are Playing the Mysterious Game ‘Deadlock’ Right Now

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• August 13, 2024

No official details exist yet for Deadlock, the rumored 6v6 team shooter from Valve. That hasn’t stopped people from playing it on Steam.

Hamas says it will not join ceasefire talks this week

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• August 13, 2024

Hamas has said it will not join ceasefire talks this week.

Now it’s Democrats who want the House to investigate X for political censorship

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• August 13, 2024

The House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) sent a letter to his committee’s chair, Jim Jordan (R-OH), on Thursday, urging him to investigate inaccurate information about the presidential election on X (Twitter). Jordan, a self-proclaimed free speech advocate, has relentlessly pursued claims that social platforms have censored conservative voices. For a little taste of what Jordan considers censorship, he cried foul when platforms removed bogus COVID conspiracies during the height of the pandemic and banned Donald Trump for inciting a mob to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Nadler cited reports that Grok, X’s AI chatbot, falsely claimed Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris missed deadlines in nine states, making her ineligible to appear on their ballots. Harris didn’t miss any deadlines and will appear on all 50 states’ ballots.

In addition, Nadler pointed to reports that Musk’s social platform suspended the group White Dudes for Harris (@dudes4harris) after it hosted an event that raised over $4 million from over 200,000 people for the Vice President’s campaign. The account was barred due to a “user report” accusing it of “violating rules against evading suspension,” which was never explained further. After X reinstated the White Dudes account the following day, the same profile was labeled as spam after being falsely accused of “manipulating the platform,” limiting its reach.

Nadler also mentioned “prominent journalists with left-leaning accounts” finding their X profiles “accidentally” suspended.

“Given Chairman Jordan’s extensive focus on allegations of censorship on social media this Congress, Ranking Member Nadler urged Chairman Jordan to continue fighting against political discrimination on platforms by investigating this matter,” Nadler’s office wrote in the letter. “Chairman Jordan’s silence on this matter follows X’s actions to stop disinformation against Republican officials on its platform that have not been similarly applied to Democratic officials.”

“In sum, I lack confidence that Mr. Musk (with his self-proclaimed expansive view on free speech) will take the same swift action against false election information about liberals as he does when it targets conservatives.”

Musk has seemingly had no issue policing accusations of the censorship of right-wing figures. Nadler’s letter cites the platform’s swift response to false posts claiming to derive from internal X software which stated Musk, Trump and other far-right personalities were exempt from policies banning racial slurs. The account posting the false images was suspended within hours, and they were soon tagged with warning labels about manipulated media. X confirmed that multiple accounts were suspended for sharing the bogus pictures.

Where is the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in this fight? Likely, sitting it out. “The FEC has consistently dismissed complaints against social media sites where they could show that they were merely enforcing their own moderation rules,” campaign finance lawyer Brett Kappel told The Washington Post. “That’s likely to continue to be the case with X even though the company has seriously weakened its own rules.”

“While we may have significant disagreement over the degree and extent of content moderation, I hope that we can at least agree that enforcement on a major platform like X should be fair to both sides,” Nadler said. “At a basic level, a platform’s policies should be applied in an even-handed manner free from political bias.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/now-its-democrats-who-want-the-house-to-investigate-x-for-political-censorship-180048710.html?src=rss

Google’s Pixel 9 series won’t launch with Android 15

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• August 13, 2024

Google users may have been waiting for an announcement about Android 15, but it seems like we’ll be waiting longer to have the new operating system on smartphones. The spec sheet for the upcoming line of Google Pixel 9 devices confirms that the phones will launch with Android 14. This applies to all four of the new devices: the Google Pixel 9, Google Pixel 9 Pro, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Google

This is an unusual approach for Google, but that may be because the new Pixel models are coming out on an earlier timeline than the usual annual OS updates. Android 14 came out in October last year, so we can expect to hear more about Android 15 later in the fall. The operating system is in its second public beta, so we’ve already seen some of what it can do. And despite the new phones running Android 14, there are a host of new AI-powered features that’ll be available when the phones go on sale next week.

Catch up on all the news from Google’s Pixel 9 launch event right here!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/googles-pixel-9-series-wont-launch-with-android-15-175323603.html?src=rss