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Reddit has just changed the rules so moderators of subreddits must get admin approval to switch from public to private, as originally reported by The Verge. This is being seen by many as an attempt to curb sitewide protests, as these requests must be approved by Reddit staffers. There will be no way for multiple subreddits to go private at once without Reddit having its hand on the lever. The company put a little note on the support page that reads if youre changing your community type after community creation, youll need to submit a request. This page doesn't offer any reasoning behind the decision. Reddit We reached out to Reddit to inquire about this most recent policy change and the company pointed us to a post on the subreddit r/modnews written by VP of community Laura Nestler. She wrote that the ability to instantly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules. So it looks like last years protests are absolutely connected to today's changes. Nestler also suggested that this is an issue of personal responsibility, writing that communities should honor the expectations they set public communities should remain accessible to all; private communities should remain private. On the topic of recent protests, switching from public to private is the exact way in which subreddits expressed dissatisfaction with last years API pricing changes. In that case, over 8,000 subreddits went private in tandem. This means that the subreddits became inaccessible to the general public, though they remained active for current members. The sites daily traffic suffered as a result. This allegedly had an impact on the functionality of Reddit itself, as there was a major site outage after all of those subreddits went private. The company blamed the protests for this outage, telling Engadget that "a significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues. Not all protests involve switching a subreddit from public to private. Some moderators protest Reddit by labeling a subreddit as NSFW. This disallows advertising on the subreddit and makes it harder to search for. The company also put the kibosh on this move, as that kind of switch also now requires admin approval. Its worth noting that last years protests didnt work. Reddit went ahead with those API charges, which forced third-party apps like Apollo to shut down. The company also went in and took complete control of one of the larger subreddits that participated in the protest. Now, theres todays change that effectively bans sitewide protests altogether. Adding insult to injury, Reddit recently struck gold by licensing its content to train AI models. That deal will reportedly net the company around $60 million per year, but the users who actually created the content thats being licensed will be getting approximately $0 per year. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/reddit-policy-changes-make-sitewide-protests-nearly-impossible-183754240.html?src=rss
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Verizon mobile customers reported widespread outages across the US on Monday. Starting at around 9:30AM ET, hundreds of thousands of people flagged issues with their mobile service on Downdetector, which tracks user-submitted outage reports. The volume of reports spiked at almost 105,000 at 11:20AM, but were still reaching almost 59,000 at 12:52PM. Many folks claimed they were unable to make or receive calls or exchange text messages. Those with an iPhone may be seeing "SOS" instead of the usual connection bars on the top right of their screen. That's a common sight when there's limited service or none at all. However, affected iPhone users can still make emergency calls via other networks. A Downdetector heatmap suggested that the issue was most prevalent in New York, New Jersey, Georgia and elsewhere on the east coast and midwest. A narrow yellow band of reports was also emerging on the west coast as of 1:10PM ET. along with an intensifying heat spot in Los Angeles. Verizon confirmed that service was affected for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to solve the issue, the company wrote on X at 11:48AM. The cause of the outage is not yet clear. We are aware of an issue impacting service for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue. Verizon News (@VerizonNews) September 30, 2024 This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/verizon-confirms-a-network-outage-is-affecting-mobile-customers-across-the-us-172126080.html?src=rss
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ASUS's latest Zenbook S14, much like the Zenbook 14 OLED we reviewed last December, is a solid ultraportable with one major selling point: It's among the first laptops to use Intel's newest CPUs. In this case, it's the Core Ultra 7 258V, a processor that sits in the mid-range of the company's "Lunar Lake" lineup. While Intel touts these chips as its most efficient ever, I've been curious about what that means for raw performance, especially since they top out with just eight cores. Based on my testing, I can confirm that the Zenbook S14 delivers the best battery life we've ever seen from an Intel laptop. It reached 16 hours and eight minutes in the PCMark 10 battery benchmark. In comparison, the Zenbook S16 powered by AMD's new Ryzen AI 9 365 chip only hit 12 hours and 47 minutes. The Intel system's timing is close to the 17 hours and 45 minutes we saw from the Dell XPS 13 Copilot+ , which is powered by Qualcomms Snapdragon X Elite. While it's astounding to see how much progress Intel has made with battery life, that does come with some compromises. In a few benchmarks, the Zenbook S14 doesn't score much higher than Intel's last-gen Core Ultra chips, and it's often bested by AMD's Ryzen AI on multithreaded tasks. But, as we often say, benchmarks don't tell the entire story. A gorgeous ultraportable When I reviewed the Zenbook 14 OLED a year ago, I couldn't help but point out how dated it looked. It was practically the same as ASUS' laptops from a decade ago (albeit with slimmer screen bezels). Not so with the Zenbook S14. It's impressive the moment you open it up and feel its lid, which is built with a material ASUS calls "Ceraluminum." As the name implies, it's a combination of ceramic and aluminum, and it feels almost uncanny, like something between high-end plastic and smooth metal. It's still premium, but it's also distinctly different from most other laptops. Combining ceramics and aluminum isn't exactly new ASUS notes that it's a popular option for aerospace and watch designs but we haven't yet seen it deployed in laptops. It's not just for looks, either. The material should also be more durable than standard metal. The rest of the Zenbook 14 S's body is made out of a solid block of metal, but ASUS added some unique tweaks there as well. The lower part of the case features a geometric grille above the keyboard, consisting of 2,715 circular cooling vents. ASUS claims this design enhances airflow while also keeping dirt and dust out. Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget ASUS 14-inch 3K "Lumina" OLED display dominates the Zenbook S14, and it delivers everything I want from a modern laptop screen. It sports a fast 120Hz refresh rate and 500 nits of peak brightness. While its bezels are relatively thin compared to older ASUS systems, they're still noticeably chunkier than Dell's latest InfinityEdge screens on the XPS 13 and 14. The system would look much sleeker if ASUS could shave off more of its bottom and side bezels. Most importantly, though, the OLED display looks glorious, with deliciously dark black levels and colors that pop off the screen. The Zenbook S14 is surprisingly sturdy for a 14-inch laptop that weighs 2.65 pounds and measures 0.47 inches thin. It's slightly lighter and a hair thicker than the most recent 13-inch MacBook Air, and feels similarly polished. Notably, it also offers many more useful ports than Apple's ultraportable. The S14 includes two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connections, a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, a headphone jack and even an old-school USB Type-A port. The only thing it's missing is Ethernet and an SD card slot. Unfortunately, ASUS couldn't get everything right with the Zenbook S14. Its quad-speaker audio system is serviceable, but the sound loses any sort of depth and detail as you ramp up the volume. And while it's nice to have a Windows Hello-compatible webcam for fast logins, the 1080p sensor looks far grainier and less detailed than Dell's XPS line and the MacBook Air. Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget Its keyboard also feels merely serviceable, with little responsive feedback while typing. Thats a particular shame, since thats been a constant complaint weve had with ASUS keyboards. At least the touchpad is large and responsive to swipes and multi-finger gestures. You can also adjust the volume and other settings by sliding your finger along the sides of the touchpad. In use: Capable, but don't stress it Thanks to Intel's Core Ultra 7 258V chip, the Zenbook S14 felt impressively zippy from the start. I breezed through the Windows setup process, downloaded the latest updates and installed my usual testing programs in just a few minutes. It didn't sweat whenever I needed to jump between apps like Spotify, Slack and Evernote, and I didn't notice any of the lag I often see on Windows notebooks bogged down by third-party bloatware. It was always ready to get work done. PCMark 10 Geekbench 6 CPU 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Cinebench 2024 ASUS Zenbook S14 (Intel Core Ultra 7 258V) 6,688 (Base Test) 14,215 (Applications) 2,569/10,442 7,158 121/482 Dell XPS 13 Copilot+ (Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite) 14,024 (Applications) 2,621/14,194 6,191 122/748 Dell XPS 13 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Intel Arc) 6,806 (Base test) 2,276/11,490 4,579 90/453 Apple MacBook Air (M3) N/A 3,190/12,102 8,310 141490 In PCMark 10, the Zenbook S14 scored almost exactly the same as the Surface Laptop 7 for Business, which uses the last-gen Core Ultra 7 165H. It also matched the XPS 13 Copilot+ edition, which had a Snapdragon X Elite chip, in the PCMark 10 Applications benchmark. The Zenbook's multithreaded performance was noticeably worse than either of those machines in Geekbench 6, likely due to the reduced core count this generation. The big selling point for Intel's Lunar Lake chips is their dramatically improved NPU (neural processing unit), which can reach up to 47 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) of AI performance. In comparison, the previous Core Ultra chips had a significantly less powerful 11 TOPS NPU, while AMD's new Ryzen AI chips reach up to 50 TOPS. (More powerful Lunar Lake chips can hit up to 48 TOPS.) Higher TOPS figures means Copilot+ PCs like the Zenbook S14 will be able to tackle demanding AI workloads more quickly, without impacting overall CPU performance. Unfortunately, there still aren't a ton of AI features to test at the time of this review. Microsoft's Copilot+ Windows 11 update for Intel and AMD systems isn't arriving until November, and even that will only include a beta version of the controversial Recall feature. It's also hard to find apps that take advantage of a local NPU most entries in the Windows Store "AI Hub" rely on cloud AI processing. Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget At least there's Audacity's OpenVino plugin, which Intel developed to show off its AI PC hardware. It offers NPU-powered features like noise suppression and transcription, but it also requires an involved setup process that may be confusing to Audacity novices. I was able to completely remove incessant jackhammering from a five-minute clip in one minute and eight seconds using the NPU alone. That's not very fast in the world of audio editing (CPU rendering can tackle a noise-filled 90 minute file in three minutes and thirty seconds), but what's key is that the NPU handles the same work using very little power. That could be important if you're stuck editing on battery in a plane or remote location. I was also impressed by Intel's latest Arc 140V GPU, which let me play Halo Infinite between 35 fps and 45 fps in 1080p with low quality graphics settings. That's far from a smooth experience, but it's fascinating to see it from a built-in GPU. Intel's graphics also scored well above the Snapdragon X Elite across the board, especially in the Geekbench 6 GPU test. Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget Pricing and the competition ASUS launched the Zenbook S14 with a starting price of $1,500, but its already slightly discounted at Best Buy for $1,400. That configuration gets you a Core Ultra 7 chip, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Thats not too shabby, considering the XPS 13 Copilot+ system with a Snapdragon X Elite costs $1,800 when equipped with 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and an OLED display. The Zenbook also doesnt have the compatibility issues inherent with Snapdragon systems, which have to emulate older Windows apps and cant run many popular games at all. As usual, ASUS also delivers far more value than Apple. A MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD costs $1,700, and thats also stuck with a 60Hz LCD screen. Wrap-up The Zenbook S14 leans more on efficiency than raw power, but its still an incredible achievement for Intel, a company that used to be infamous for energy-devouring mobile chips. While the Lunar Lake chips NPU makes the Zenbook ready for Copilot+ and AI features, its true selling points are its excellent battery life, slick ASUS design and gorgeous OLED display.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/asus-zenbook-s14-review-a-showpiece-for-intels-lunar-lake-ai-pc-chips-171642261.html?src=rss
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