Month: August 2024
NYT’s The Mini crossword answers for August 21
Answers to each clue for the August 21, 2024 edition of NYT’s The Mini crossword puzzle.
The Mini is a bite-sized version of The New York Times‘ revered daily crossword. While the crossword is a lengthier experience that requires both knowledge and patience to complete, The Mini is an entirely different vibe.
With only a handful of clues to answer, the daily puzzle doubles as a speed-running test for many who play it.
So, when a tricky clue disrupts a player’s flow, it can be frustrating! If you find yourself stumped playing The Mini — much like with Wordle and Connections — we have you covered.
Here are the clues and answers to NYT’s The Mini for Tuesday, August 21, 2024:
Across
Top ten, e.g.
The answer is List.
Nintendo antagonist in a yellow hat and purple overalls
The answer is Wario.
One end of a battery
The answer is Anode.
Ten in an Olympic swimming pool
The answer is Lanes.
What “X” can mean
The answer is Kiss.
Down
Hawaiian island seen from the west shore of Maui
The answer is Lanai.
Unwrinkles, as a dress shirt
The answer is Irons.
A decagon has ten
The answer is Sides.
Bottom ten?
The answer is Toes.
Go for a stroll
The answer is Walk.
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Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.
The FTC’s noncompete agreements ban has been struck down
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images
A federal judge has blocked the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements that make it difficult for workers to join their employers’ rivals or launch competing businesses. The ruling prevents the FTC’s ban on noncompete agreements from taking effect on September 4th, though the agency could still appeal the decision.
On Tuesday, US District Judge Ada Brown in Dallas, Texas ruled that the antitrust agency exceeded its statutory authority to ban practices related to unfair methods of competition, saying the noncompete agreements ban is “unreasonably overbroad without a reasonable explanation,” and would “cause irreparable harm.” Brown’s decision now stops the FTC from blocking noncompetes nationwide after initially delaying the ban with a preliminary injunction in July.
According to the FTC, around 30 million people — one in five Americans — have signed noncompete agreements. A federal judge in Pennsylvania had previously declined to block the ban in a separate case last month.
“We are seriously considering a potential appeal”
“We are disappointed by Judge Brown’s decision and will keep fighting to stop noncompetes that restrict the economic liberty of hardworking Americans, hamper economic growth, limit innovation, and depress wages,” FTC spokesperson Victoria Graham said in a statement to The Verge. ”We are seriously considering a potential appeal.”
If the FTC does push ahead with an appeal, it would go to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to be heard. Appeals on district court decisions are often a lengthy process, with the FTC’s appeal against Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition still pending a result. In the meantime, the FTC will have to challenge noncompetes via case-by-case enforcement actions.
The ruling upholds a lawsuit that Tax firm Ryan LLC filed in April — later backed by the US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable — to challenge the noncompete agreements ban, arguing that it would make it difficult for companies to retain talent. When the FTC voted 3-2 in support of the ban, the agency said it would allow for more than 8,500 new businesses to be made each year.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images
A federal judge has blocked the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements that make it difficult for workers to join their employers’ rivals or launch competing businesses. The ruling prevents the FTC’s ban on noncompete agreements from taking effect on September 4th, though the agency could still appeal the decision.
On Tuesday, US District Judge Ada Brown in Dallas, Texas ruled that the antitrust agency exceeded its statutory authority to ban practices related to unfair methods of competition, saying the noncompete agreements ban is “unreasonably overbroad without a reasonable explanation,” and would “cause irreparable harm.” Brown’s decision now stops the FTC from blocking noncompetes nationwide after initially delaying the ban with a preliminary injunction in July.
According to the FTC, around 30 million people — one in five Americans — have signed noncompete agreements. A federal judge in Pennsylvania had previously declined to block the ban in a separate case last month.
“We are disappointed by Judge Brown’s decision and will keep fighting to stop noncompetes that restrict the economic liberty of hardworking Americans, hamper economic growth, limit innovation, and depress wages,” FTC spokesperson Victoria Graham said in a statement to The Verge. ”We are seriously considering a potential appeal.”
If the FTC does push ahead with an appeal, it would go to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to be heard. Appeals on district court decisions are often a lengthy process, with the FTC’s appeal against Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition still pending a result. In the meantime, the FTC will have to challenge noncompetes via case-by-case enforcement actions.
The ruling upholds a lawsuit that Tax firm Ryan LLC filed in April — later backed by the US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable — to challenge the noncompete agreements ban, arguing that it would make it difficult for companies to retain talent. When the FTC voted 3-2 in support of the ban, the agency said it would allow for more than 8,500 new businesses to be made each year.
SubQuery Launches Decentralized AI Inference Hosting at Web3 Summit in Berlin
Singapore, Singapore, 21st August 2024, Chainwire
The post SubQuery Launches Decentralized AI Inference Hosting at Web3 Summit in Berlin first appeared on Tech Startups.
Singapore, Singapore, 21st August 2024, Chainwire
The post SubQuery Launches Decentralized AI Inference Hosting at Web3 Summit in Berlin first appeared on Tech Startups.
Asus provides another clue that AMD’s Ryzen 9000X3D CPUs could be here soon – which would be seriously bad news for Intel
Asus might have revealed AMD’s secret weapon against Intel’s Arrow Lake – that 3D V-Cache Zen 5 CPUs could be here soon.
Asus has prematurely listed AMD’s Ryzen 9000X3D processors on its microsite for incoming 800 series motherboards, in what’s another hint that next-gen 3D V-Cache CPUs might be here sooner than expected.
As VideoCardz noticed, the site lists X870 (and X870E), B850 and B840 motherboards for Ryzen 9000 (second-gen AM5 boards still based on the same socket that was introduced with Ryzen 7000).
However, the telling bit here is that the site mentions ‘Ryzen 9000X3D’ in numerous places, or it did anyway – that no longer seems to be the case. That said, Ryzen 9000X3D is even listed in the URL and that’s still present.
So, the theory – and it is stretching things somewhat, admittedly – is that AMD’s 800 series motherboards are definitely going on sale soon, possibly within a matter of weeks, and so maybe, just maybe, Ryzen 9000X3D is looking at a similar timeframe for arrival.
If so, that could seriously interfere with Intel’s Arrow Lake launch, Team Blue’s next-gen CPUs which are expected to debut on October 10 going by the latest chatter. Or at least it’d pour some very cold water on the chances of Arrow Lake grabbing the title of the fastest gaming processor, as 3D V-Cache CPUs are excellent for PC games thanks to that cache.
Analysis: Backing up previous speculation
All this might sound like a wild punt of a guess, but it’s not just guesswork from out of nowhere, as there have previously been rumors that AMD could be shooting for a surprisingly early release for X3D chips for the Zen 5 range.
Typically, we’d expect these 3D V-Cache processors to pitch up early in 2025. However, a past rumor suggested a September launch, alongside clues in AMD’s own drivers – and this apparent slip-up from Asus backs all this up to some extent. Or at least it suggests that even if Ryzen 9000X3D chips may not be ready next month – which seems rather unlikely at this point – they could still be inbound soon enough.
VideoCardz further points out that there’s an AMD event on October 10 – funnily enough – but it seems unlikely that would include an X3D launch, as it’s focused on business products (including Ryzen AI 300 Pro, and Epyc chips for servers). So, 3D V-Cache would not fit in there, but it’s entirely possible Team Red could be planning a separate launch event for these X3D processors – they’re important enough, after all.
As ever with rumors, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, but it’s an exciting prospect that a Ryzen 9800X3D could be in the offing in the near future (the other expected debut launches are the 9950X3D and 9900X3D). Given some of the reaction to Ryzen 9000 in general – which has been a bit flat – it could even be argued that AMD needs to get these CPUs out sooner rather than later, and as mentioned, this would definitely hurt Intel’s chances on the gaming front.
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Taylor Swift’s ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’ video is all Eras Tour footage
Taylor Swift released a new video for “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”, featuring Eras Tour behind-the-scenes footage.
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Hackers may have found an entirely new way to backdoor into Windows systems
A never-before seen backdoor was spotted in a university in Taiwan, but its origins remain a mystery.
A University in Taiwan has been attacked with a previously undocumented Windows backdoor that uses an usual, but not entirely new, method of communication.
Cybersecurity researchers from the Symantec Threat Hunter Team published their findings on Msupedge, which is designed as a dynamic link library (.DLL) with a particularly distinctive feature of communicating with the C2 via DNS traffic.
Msupedge grants its operators the ability to create processes on the target endpoint, download files, sleep for a predetermined time interval, create a temporary file (purpose unknown), and delete that said file.
Missing key details
“The most notable feature of this backdoor is that it communicates with a command-and-control (C&C) server via DNS traffic,” the researchers said in their report. “Msupedge uses DNS tunneling for communication with the C&C server. The code for the DNS tunneling tool is based on the publicly available dnscat2 tool. It receives commands by performing name resolution.”
The researchers added that the technique is known, and has been used by “multiple threat actors”. “It is nevertheless something that is not often seen.”
We also don’t know exactly what the threat actors were looking for, or if they found it. We do know that they breached the victim devices through a PHP vulnerability that allows remote code execution (RCE). The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-4577, carries a severity score of 9.8/10, making it a critical flaw.
Other important details are still missing – as it isn’t known who the threat actors behind the attack are, or who the victim is (other than it is an unnamed university in Taiwan).
Given the current political climate, we can only speculate that this is the work of a Chinese state-sponsored group running cyber-espionage campaigns, targeting intellectuals and other academia members. Volt Typhoon is one such organization, which was observed in the past, running similar campaigns.
Via TheHackerNews
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Best CD Rates Today — Time’s Running Out on High APYs, Aug. 21, 2024
Don’t sleep on today’s top CD rates. The longer you wait, the lower your earning potential could be.
Don’t sleep on today’s top CD rates. The longer you wait, the lower your earning potential could be.
JBL unveils Tour Pro 3: a screen-toting earbuds case that’s now an Auracast source device
This isn’t a full review, but having worn them for a day, there’s plenty to recommend JBL’s flagship screen-toting earbuds beyond the case…
In this day and age, you don’t have to pay flagship money to get a futuristic lock-screen-image-toting earbuds case; JBL made that available not only with its JBL Live Beam 3, but across its mid-range earbuds oeuvre in January 2024 comprising the JBL Live 3 Buds, Beam and Flex.
I liked it so much, I wrote a feature dedicated to the levelled up experience in JBL’s second-gen smart-case earbuds – because in case you missed it in December 2022, when JBL first put a smartwatch-style screen on an earbuds case, our subsequent JBL Tour 2 Pro review revealed that we weren’t wholly convinced that this first effort was anything other than a colorful novelty.
But because that second smart case was so good that it made it to our best noise-cancelling earbuds guide as our ‘best for battery’ pick, I’m eager to see what JBL can do with its third effort, this time in a flagship proposition. And putting the case to one side, what about the spec-sheet and audio chops?
Well, this is not a full review. But I do happen to have a review sample of JBL’s just-launched (August 21) Tour Pro 3 right here, and I can give you some early facts, figures, thoughts, and impressions (spoiler alert: it’s good news).
JBL Tour Pro 3: what you need to know
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
First off, you get two color choices – black and ‘latte’ – and although JBL is a little vague about the exact dimensions, the company does tell me that the screen is 30% larger and the case a little smaller in this iteration. Certainly, the screen is bigger than that of the Live Beam 3, and the case a little smaller than that of the Tour Pro 2 (scroll down to the image below for a side-by-side comparison).
I’ll start with what I see as the biggest updates here. First off, this case is now a transmitter (see the Jabra Elite 10 Gen 2 or LG Tone Free T90S for similar) meaning that with the included USB-A to USB-C cable, it’s able to bypass Bluetooth, hook up to your in-flight infotainment systems (for example) and broadcast the audio to your wireless earbuds. But more than that, the JBL Tour Pro 3’s case is one of the first audio products to arrive as a registered Auracast source device. Essentially, that means anyone in the vicinity with Auracast-enabled headphones could also join in, to hear the sound being transmitted, and you can add a password if you don’t want random passers-by joining your broadcast.
Next up, JBL’s Spatial Audio 360 is here (scroll to the image of ‘spatial audio’ options on the smart case, above) which includes head-tracked, device-agnostic immersive audio aided by an updated algorithm. I haven’t had a lot of time with it, but initially, it’s remarkable. While listening to Melissa Etheridge’s I’m the Only One, I forgot I was wearing earbuds as her textured vocal appeared to emanate from somewhere close to my phone, even as I turned my head.
JBL has added L/R balance optimization, 12 EQ bands to tailor things sonically and – a big one for me – JBL’s new Personi-Fi 3.0 update. For the uninitiated (it’s okay, we’re all friends here), this feature helps to personalize the sound to your liking, creating a sound profile based on your hearing capabilities. It first asks a few questions, then checks your current ambient audio – and I absolutely loved Personi-Fi 2.0, in the Live Beam 3.
What about the noise cancellation?
Old(er) meets new: JBL Live Beam 3 on the left; Tour Pro 3 on the right (Image credit: Future)
Good question: but to explain what’s new there, we need to talk hardware first. Under the driver housing (which is on the larger side, but nicely ergonomic and you do get five ear tips to ensure a good fit) there’s now a hybrid 10.2mm cellulose dynamic driver coupled with a 5.1mm x 2.8mm balanced armature setup. Here, JBL tells me frequencies from 20Hz (aka the lowest our ears can detect) up to 8kHz are handled by the dynamic drive unit; 8kHZ-40kHz (or far beyond what we can hear) sounds are taken care of by the BA driver configuration – and interestingly, each has its own DAC to convert the digital signal to analogue.
Codecs support is better too: in addition to SBC and AAC, hi-res LDAC joins the party as well as LE Audio and the LC3 codec in dongle mode (i.e., transmission mode).
Thanks to a total of six mics (two outer; one inner) and an enhanced algorithm that uses AI, there’s a call equalizer function to regulate the volume of the caller on the other end, and you can even make your own voice appear brighter to your caller.
Now, the noise cancellation – because again, it’s a big deal on paper. JBL claims its aforementioned AI algorithm plus the company’s True Adaptive Noise Cancellation 2.0 with ‘smart calibration’ should actually be able to tackle what it calls ‘incident noises’ (think a baby crying on the train) in addition to the low-level constant thrums which most solutions can tackle quite readily these days. I haven’t had a thorough test of it yet, but can tell you that after receiving them, I sat in a blissful bubble of silence in the office.
Battery life? The claim is up to 44 hours of music playback – 11 hours from the buds plus three more full charges with ANC off – or eight hours plus three more full charges with ANC on for a 32-hour total if you’re always using ANC. And you can apparently get an additional three hours of listening with a quick 10-minute speed charge.
Pricing? Of course, although you’ll need to brace yourself: £279.99 / €299.99 (which is around $365 or AU$540). For clarity, the older Tour Pro 2 launched in January 2023 at MSRPs of $249.95 / £220 / AU$350, so there’s been something of a price hike, although given the specs listed, it’s not unreasonable.
This is, again, not a full review. But that’s in the pipeline, I promise you…
(Image credit: Future)
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