Vice Media Group Preps $400 Million Sale To George Soros and Fortress

Vice Media Group is planning to sell to investors for about $400 million — a fraction of its once high-flying $5.7 billion valuation back in 2017. The investors include Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management, according to the Wall Street Journal. Variety reports: Cash-strapped Vice Media has been searching for a buyer over the past year, to no avail. In February, Nancy Dubuc announced her exit as CEO after almost five years. The company subsequently appointed longtime execs Bruce Dixon and Hozefa Lokhandwala as co-CEOs. Under the proposed sale to “senior lenders,” Fortress “plans to find a role for Vice co-founder Shane Smith,” who is executive chairman and previously served as CEO prior to Dubuc’s hire.

The bankruptcy and sale would “wipe out” most of Vice’s other shareholders, including TPG Group and James Murdoch (who invested in the company via his Lupa Systems investment firm), per the Journal report. Vice has been unable to pay many of its vendors and recently secured a $30 million “lifeline” from Fortress, the Journal previously reported. Last week, the New York Times reported that Vice Media was preparing for bankruptcy after being unable to find a buyer. It announced a series of layoffs and said it was pulling the plug on “Vice News Tonight.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The 2023 Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees

Slashdot reader Dave Knott shares the four class of 2023 inductees into the Video Game Hall Of Fame. They were announced today at The Strong National Museum of Play. From the press release: Barbie Fashion Designer : “The 1996 hit Barbie Fashion Designer emerged at a time when many games were marketed to male players. Published by Digital Domain/Mattel Media, it proved that a computer game targeted to girls could succeed, selling more than 500,000 copies in two months. The game helped greatly expanded the market for video games and in the process opened important — and ongoing — discussions about gender and stereotypes in gaming. Barbie Fashion Designer was also innovative in bridging the gap between the digital and the physical, allowing players to design clothes for their Barbie dolls and print them on special fabric.”

Computer Space : “Nutting Associate’s Computer Space appeared in 1971 and was the first commercial video game. Inspired by the early minicomputer and previous World Video Game Hall of Fame inductee — Spacewar! (1962) — the coin-operated Computer Space proved that video games could reach an audience outside of computer labs. While not a best-seller, it was a trailblazer in the video game world and inspired its creators to go on to establish Atari Inc., a video game giant in the 1970s and 1980s.”

The Last of Us : “Released by Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2013, The Last of Us jumped into an oversaturated field of post-apocalyptic zombie games and quickly stood out among the rest with its in-depth storytelling, intimate exploration of humanity, thrilling game jumps and cutscenes, and its memorable characters. More than 200 publications named it the game of the year in 2013. Its story has since made the jump to Hollywood, inspiring an HBO adaptation in 2023 watched weekly by millions.”

Wii Sports : “Wii Sports launched with the Nintendo Wii home video game system in 2006 and introduced motion-based technology to living rooms across the world. With a simple swipe of the controller, players could serve a tennis ball, hurl a bowling bowl, throw a left hook, or drive a golf ball. The simple mechanics made the game accessible to almost anyone — allowing it to be played by young children and seniors alike — and helped to redefine the idea of who is a “gamer.” Ultimately, the game helped Nintendo to sell more than 100 million Wii consoles worldwide.” These titles managed to beat out several other incredibly popular titles, including Angry Birds, Age of Empires, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, GoldenEye 007, NBA 2K, FIFA International Soccer, Quake, and Wizardry.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

El Salvador President Signs Law Eliminating Taxes On Tech Innovations

Following the announcement of the bill in March, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele signed a law today eliminating income, property, capital gains, and other tariffs on technology innovations. Watcher Guru reports: The announcement reinforces El Salvador’s perspective as a haven for technology development. Additionally, Bukele stated that the new act protects “technology innovations, software and app programming, AI, computer, and communications hardware manufacturing.”

The Innovations and Technology Manufacturing Incentives Act will likely attract tech developments to the country. Moreover, the elimination of taxes presents an economic benefit to a host of companies. Conversely, El Salvador continues to maintain its commitment to a variety of tech innovations that are being developed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Porn VPN Searches Soar In Utah Amid Age Verification Bill

Internet users are turning to VPN services as a means to circumvent Utah’s new law requiring porn sites to verify users’ ages. The spike in VPN searches appears to be directly related to Pornhub’s decision on Tuesday to completely disable its websites for people living in the state. TechRadar reports: Google searches for virtual private networks (VPNs) have been skyrocketing since, with a peak registered on May 3, the day the new law came into force. By downloading a VPN service, pornography fans will be able to keep accessing Pornhub and similar sites with ease. That’s because a virtual private network is security software able to spoof users’ IP address (digital location and device identifier). Hence a surge of interest in VPNs across Utah as people will simply need to connect to a server located in a US state or foreign country where the restriction isn’t yet enforced.

“Utah’s age-verification law shows a worrying trend to further restrict digital freedoms and disregard data privacy across the US,” said a spokesperson of secure VPN provider Private Internet Access (PIA). “Private Internet Access is a long-time advocate of greater digital privacy, and we urge lawmakers to consider other ways of protecting children online, including education, guidance from parents, and open conversations about safe internet usage, rather than relying on increasingly intrusive digital regulations which disregard people’s privacy and online freedom.” You can see the spike in “virtual private network” searches via Google Trends.

“Search queries for VPN were at peak popularity in Utah just before 4 a.m. EST Tuesday, according to the trends data,” notes Newsweek. “Other related queries in the past week include searches for VPN extensions like Hola and Fox Speed.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Montana’s Governor’s Changes To TikTok Ban Bill Would Ban All Social Media Entirely

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte has returned an “amendatory veto” to the legislature regarding the state’s unconstitutional “ban TikTok” bill, proposing alternative draft language that inadvertently could ban all social media platforms in the state due to poor drafting. The revised language targets any social media application that collects personal information and provides it to a foreign adversary, but since most social media networks collect such information and share it with entities in foreign countries, it would effectively ban all social media in Montana. Techdirt reports: As [1st Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn] points out, the new draft targets any “social media application” that allows for “the collection of personal information or data” and allows for “the personal information or data to be provided to a foreign adversary or a person or entity located within a country designated as a foreign adversary.” Now, some might think that sounds reasonable, but the details here matter. And the details reveal that EVERY social media network collects such information and provides it to people located in countries designated as a foreign adversary. And that’s because “personal information” is a very broad term, as is “provided.” [Ari writes:]

“‘Surely,’ you might think, ‘that just covers the data platforms amass by monitoring and tracking us, right?’ Perhaps not. The bill doesn’t define the term, so who knows what it means in their heads. But we have an idea of what it means out in the real (online) world, by way of the regulations implementing the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Those regulations include in the definition of ‘personal information’ things like: First and last name; Online contact information; A screen or user name where it functions in the same manner as online contact information. In other words, the types of information that accompany virtually every piece of content posted on social media. If a platform allows that kind of information to be provided to any foreign adversary or a person or entity located within a foreign adversary, it is banned from Montana.

Do you know who might be persons located within a country designated as a foreign adversary? Users. Users who are provided the kinds of ‘personal information’ that are inherent in the very concept of social media. So, effectively, the bill would ban any social media company that allows any user in China, Russia, Iran, or Cuba to see content from a Montana user (and this is a generous reading, nothing in the bill seems to require that the data/information shared be from a Montana resident). On top of it, each time a user from one of those countries accesses content, platforms would be subject to a $10,000 fine. Do you know which platforms allow people in those countries to access content posted in the United States? All of them. Congratulations, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte. You just managed to accidentally ban all social media for Montanans. Good work.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TSMC To Charge Up To 30% More For Chips Made In the US

According to DigiTimes, TSMC will charge an extra 30% more for chips made in American than for chips made in Taiwan. Tom’s Hardware reports: TSMC has started discussions with customers about orders and pricing for both overseas plants, which are set to begin commercial production in late 2024. Industry insiders believe that prices of chips produced on TSMC’s N4 and N5 process technologies in the U.S. will be 20% — 30% higher than those in Taiwan, while older process chips produced in Japan’s Kumamoto facility on N28/N22 as well as N16/N12 nodes may cost 10% – 15% more than similar chips fabbed in Taiwan.

While American chip designers certainly won’t appreciate higher costs on chip production in the U.S., it is likely that they will make chips aimed at government and less price-sensitive applications in Arizona. Therefore, they should be able to pass those extra costs on to their customers without risking their competitive positions. Given the high construction and operational costs of fabs in Japan and the U.S., TSMC is going to pass those extra expenses on to customers to maintain its gross margin target of 53%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China’s AI Industry Barely Slowed By US Chip Export Rules

Export controls imposed by the U.S. on microchips, aiming to hinder China’s technological advancements, have had minimal effects on the country’s tech sector. While the restrictions have slowed down variants of Nvidia’s chips for the Chinese market, it has not halted China’s progress in areas like AI, as the reduced performance is still an improvement for Chinese firms, and researchers are finding ways to overcome the limitations. Reuters reports: Nvidia has created variants of its chips for the Chinese market that are slowed down to meet U.S. rules. Industry experts told Reuters the newest one – the Nvidia H800, announced in March – will likely take 10% to 30% longer to carry out some AI tasks and could double some costs compared with Nvidia’s fastest U.S. chips. Even the slowed Nvidia chips represent an improvement for Chinese firms. Tencent Holdings, one of China’s largest tech companies, in April estimated that systems using Nvidia’s H800 will cut the time it takes to train its largest AI system by more than half, from 11 days to four days. “The AI companies that we talk to seem to see the handicap as relatively small and manageable,” said Charlie Chai, a Shanghai-based analyst with 86Research.

Part of the U.S. strategy in setting the rules was to avoid such a shock that the Chinese would ditch U.S. chips altogether and redouble their own chip-development efforts. “They had to draw the line somewhere, and wherever they drew it, they were going to run into the challenge of how to not be immediately disruptive, but how to also over time degrade China’s capability,” said one chip industry executive who requested anonymity to talk about private discussions with regulators. The export restrictions have two parts. The first puts a ceiling on a chip’s ability to calculate extremely precise numbers, a measure designed to limit supercomputers that can be used in military research. Chip industry sources said that was an effective action. But calculating extremely precise numbers is less relevant in AI work like large language models where the amount of data the chip can chew through is more important. […] The second U.S. limit is on chip-to-chip transfer speeds, which does affect AI. The models behind technologies such as ChatGPT are too large to fit onto a single chip. Instead, they must be spread over many chips – often thousands at a time — which all need to communicate with one another.

Nvidia has not disclosed the China-only H800 chip’s performance details, but a specification sheet seen by Reuters shows a chip-to-chip speed of 400 gigabytes per second, less than half the peak speed of 900 gigabytes per second for Nvidia’s flagship H100 chip available outside China. Some in the AI industry believe that is still plenty of speed. Naveen Rao, chief executive of a startup called MosaicML that specializes in helping AI models to run better on limited hardware, estimated a 10-30% system slowdown. “There are ways to get around all this algorithmically,” he said. “I don’t see this being a boundary for a very long time — like 10 years.” Moreover, AI researchers are trying to slim down the massive systems they have built to cut the cost of training products similar to ChatGPT and other processes. Those will require fewer chips, reducing chip-to-chip communications and lessening the impact of the U.S. speed limits.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel To Drop the ‘i’ Moniker In Upcoming CPU Rebrand

When Intel debuts its forthcoming Meteor Lake client processors, the company may drop its iconic “i” CPU branding and add a new moniker. Chipzilla today told The Register “We are making brand changes as we’re at an inflection point in our client roadmap in preparation for the upcoming launch of our Meteor Lake processors. We will provide more details regarding these exciting changes in the coming weeks.” From the report: The Register asked Intel about branding after semiconductor analyst Dylan Patel on Monday tweeted “Imagine you’re losing market share when you’ve been monopoly for decades, and your bright idea is to burn all brand recognition to the ground!” “That’s Intel’s plan by removing the ‘i’ in i7 i5 i3. All the decades brand recognition being lit on fire for no reason!”

Patel labelled the rebranding a “horrible very short sighted move” that won’t fix Intel’s woes and “will cause more harm than good, as many buyers know + recognize the i7 i5 branding, they won’t once it’s changed.” “The new branding sounds bad with ultra strewn about + confusing scheme.”

Patel’s mention of “Ultra” branding appears to be a reference to this benchmark result for game Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation which lists a processor called “Intel Core Ultra 5 1003H”.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft To Take On Apple Silicon With Custom ARM Chips

According to Windows Latest, Microsoft is working on new ARM chips to compete against Apple Silicon. “I have also spotted some job listings that suggest the company is building its own Silicon-based ARM chips for client devices” writes Mayank Parmar. “Additionally, I understand that Microsoft is optimizing Windows 12 for Silicon-ARM architecture.” From the report: These developments coincide with the upcoming launch of Windows 12, which has a special version optimized for silicon and designed to leverage AI capabilities. The job listings (most of them have now been taken down) describe positions related to custom silicon accelerators, System on Chips (SoCs), and high-performance, high-bandwidth designs. This suggests that Microsoft is building its own ARM-based chips, aiming to compete with Apple’s M chips lineup in terms of performance and efficiency.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Biocomputing Method Uses Enzymes As Catalysts For DNA-Based Molecular Computing

Researchers at the University of Minnesota report via Phys.Org: Biocomputing is typically done either with live cells or with non-living, enzyme-free molecules. Live cells can feed themselves and can heal, but it can be difficult to redirect cells from their ordinary functions toward computation. Non-living molecules solve some of the problems of live cells, but have weak output signals and are difficult to fine-tune and regulate. In new research published in Nature Communications, a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota has developed a platform for a third method of biocomputing: Trumpet, or Transcriptional RNA Universal Multi-Purpose GatE PlaTform.

Trumpet uses biological enzymes as catalysts for DNA-based molecular computing. Researchers performed logic gate operations, similar to operations done by all computers, in test tubes using DNA molecules. A positive gate connection resulted in a phosphorescent glow. The DNA creates a circuit, and a fluorescent RNA compound lights up when the circuit is completed, just like a lightbulb when a circuit board is tested.

The research team demonstrated that:

– The Trumpet platform has the simplicity of molecular biocomputing with added signal amplification and programmability.
– The platform is reliable for encoding all universal Boolean logic gates (NAND, NOT, NOR, AND, and OR), which are fundamental to programming languages.
– The logic gates can be stacked to build more complex circuits.

The team also developed a web-based tool facilitating the design of sequences for the Trumpet platform. “Trumpet is a non-living molecular platform, so we don’t have most of the problems of live cell engineering,” said co-author Kate Adamala, assistant professor in the College of Biological Sciences. “We don’t have to overcome evolutionary limitations against forcing cells to do things they don’t want to do. This also gives Trumpet more stability and reliability, with our logic gates avoiding the leakage problems of live cell operations.”

“It could make a lot of long-term neural implants possible. The applications could range from strictly medical, like healing damaged nerve connections or controlling prosthetics, to more sci-fi applications like entertainment or learning and augmented memory,” added Adamala.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.