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Amazon Fire Max 11 tablet preview and preorder details

May 27, 2023 Audrey

Amazon is ready to ramp up your productivity, as well as entertainment, with the new Fire Max 11 tablet. The company’s thinnest, largest and most powerful tablet to date, the Fire Max 11 has an 11-inch screen and a suite of upgraded features and accessories — including an optional magnetic keyboard and stylus — which should better appeal to business users. And starting at just $230, it’s a heck of a deal too.

The new tablet is Amazon’s first foray into larger sizes, and according to Kevin Keith, vice president of product management and marketing, it fits the trend the company has seen since the pandemic.

“If you flash back to 2019, the majority of our business was 7-inch devices — and now it’s 8 and 10 inches. In fact, our 10-inch segment has more than doubled over the last two years,” he says. In addition, the move toward using Fire tablets for things like video calls, email and general multitasking also forced Amazon to reconsider the smaller sizes.

We got a sneak peek of the new Fire Max 11 at one of Amazon’s NYC headquarters, though we’ll be getting it in soon for a full hands-on review. Here’s what you need to know right now about the largest tablet since the original Fire was launched 11 years ago.

The Amazon Fire Max 11 is the biggest, most powerful tablet the company has launched to date. We like its landscape ratio, super-light weight and slim silhouette as well as its shift to favor productivity features like video calls and email.

Amazon Fire Max 11 preorders and availability

The Amazon Fire Max 11 is available for preorder starting today, May 23, for $230 and is set to ship in June. It is available with your choice of 64GB or 128GB storage, and can be paired with the integrated Keyboard Case ($90) and Made for Amazon Stylus Pen ($35) for a bundle price starting at $330. A new Slim Cover, which doubles as a stand, is also available for $50.

Amazon claims that its Fire tablet is the number-two-selling tablet behind the iPad, and with this new addition, it hopes to compete with other popular hybrid tablets like Microsoft’s popular Surface 2-in-1 devices. However, the one thing Amazon understands is value, and with a price tag starting at just $230, the Fire Max 11 is most certainly a deal compared to rivals like the $329 iPad. And, because the back and housing is crafted from aluminum, this larger tablet also happens to be Amazon’s lightest — weighing in at just over a pound.

Though we didn’t get a chance to play with it ourselves, the specs are encouraging for those looking to combine business with pleasure. The 11-inch rectangular screen covered in strengthened glass is meant to be used horizontally, and comes with 2.4 million pixels (2000 x 1200 resolution) and 410 nits of brightness. It has 8-megapixel front and rear cameras with 1080p HD video recording and rear auto-focus, and

Microsoft’s Code-Crafting AI Details to the Potential of Pcs

May 31, 2022 Audrey

Microsoft just confirmed how artificial intelligence could locate its way into many application applications—by composing code on the fly.

At the Microsoft Build developer meeting nowadays, the company’s chief know-how officer, Kevin Scott, demonstrated an AI helper for the game Minecraft. The non-player character within the video game is driven by the very same machine discovering technological innovation Microsoft has been screening for car-generating software package code. The feat hints at how the latest improvements in AI could transform particular computing in several years to occur by replacing interfaces that you tap, variety, and click to navigate into interfaces that you simply have a discussion with.

The Minecraft agent responds appropriately to typed instructions by converting them into doing work code at the rear of the scenes working with the software API for the game. The AI model that controls the bot was trained on large amounts of code and natural language text, then shown the API technical specs for Minecraft, together with a number of use illustrations. When a participant tells it to “come below,” for instance, the underlying AI design will make the code necessary to have the agent go towards the player. In the demo proven at Construct, the bot was also able to execute far more complicated responsibilities, like retrieving objects and combining them to make some thing new. And due to the fact the product was experienced on natural language as very well as code, it can even respond to very simple issues about how to develop factors.

When it is unclear how reliably the method may operate outside the house the demo, equivalent tricks could be utilized to make other programs reply to typed or spoken instructions.

Microsoft has constructed an AI coding resource called GitHub Copilot on prime of the exact same technologies. It mechanically suggests code when a developer starts off typing, or in reaction to the opinions added to a piece of code. Scott says Copilot is the very first occasion of what will probably be a slew of “AI-first” goods in the coming decades, from Microsoft and other folks. Code-writing AI “lets you consider about accomplishing software program improvement in a distinct way—so you can express an intention for one thing that you want to execute,” he states.

Scott does not supply unique illustrations, but this could a person day suggest a version of Home windows that locates a specific document and emails it to a colleague when you inquire it to, or an AI-imbued model of Excel that turns a dataset into a chart when you request. “We’re gonna see plenty and heaps and tons of major productiveness wins for all sorts of schedule cognitive do the job that none of us primarily enjoys,” Scott states.

In current several years, AI has verified adept at tasks these types of as classifying photos, transcribing audio, and translating text. Modern algorithmic developments, mixed with massive amounts of computer electric power, have yielded new AI packages capable of additional refined

TIFF unveils crucial additions to programming team, details of 2022 version | Information

February 28, 2022 Audrey

Toronto International Movie Competition (TIFF) has declared five new critical members of the programming crew and unveiled short particulars of this year’s version which is established to operate from September 8–18.

Robyn Citizen will guide the pageant programming group and has been appointed TIFF’s director of pageant programming & Cinematheque. Citizen started at TIFF in 2018 and prior to that was a movie lecturer in the departments of Asian experiments and theatre and film at University of British Columbia from 2012-17 ahead of that, Citizen was board co-chair for Breakthroughs Movie Festival and programmed for Human Rights Movie Pageant.

Andréa Picard has stepped into the whole-time function of senior curator, TIFF & TIFF Cinematheque. She has labored for TIFF given that 1999 as a member of the TIFF Cinematheque programming group and, considering that 2006, as curator of Wavelengths.

Jane Schoettle has returned to direct programming of TIFF’s Exclusive Displays part as senior global programmer. Schoettle has worked for numerous a long time as an worldwide programmer for TIFF responsible for movies from Australia, New Zealand, and Israel as very well as American unbiased cinema. She has programmed thoroughly for festivals in Miami, Aspen, and Palm Springs and for quite a few years developed TIFF Expertise Enhancement programmes Filmmaker Lab and Writers’ Studio.

Jason Ryle has joined and takes on the new job of international programmer, Indigenous cinema which will be programmed across the pageant. He is an Anishinaabe from Lake St. Martin, Manitoba, and has labored as a producer, programmer, curator, tale editor and arts expert. He was executive director of imagineNATIVE from 2010-20, overseeing all operational and inventive pursuits of the once-a-year imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Competition, including year-spherical initiatives, global partnerships, and particular tasks.

Kelly Boutsalis, a Mohawk journalist from the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve, joins TIFF as affiliate programmer for Canadian aspect movies, although Ravi Srinivasan rejoins TIFF in a full-time part as senior supervisor, TIFF programming and will lead to the festival’s programming of Canadian feature movies and films from Southeast Asia.

Srinivasan has worked for TIFF as a seasonal programmer because 2013. Prior to his new role he was an global programmer at Sizzling Docs and founder and govt director of the South Western Worldwide Movie Competition.

Women comprise 50% of the total programming group. Seasonal programmers returning for TIFF 2022 are: Jason Anderson, intercontinental programmer, Limited Cuts Diana Cadavid, global programmer Giovanna Fulvi, senior global programmer Nataleah Hunter-Youthful, international programmer Peter Kuplowsky, worldwide programmer, Midnight Madness Dorota Lech, international programmer and Thom Powers, direct programmer, TIFF Docs.

Comprehensive-time TIFF staff customers Steve Gravestock (competition programming) and Geoff Macnaughton (lead programmer, Primetime) spherical out this year’s team of TIFF programmers.

At time of creating, and assuming there is no late summertime surge in Covid-19 cases, TIFF’s 47th edition will see the return of TIFF’s networking and celebratory occasions return including TIFF Opening Evening Party, Field Meeting, filmmaker dinners, Industry networking activities, press and programmers activities and TIFF Tribute Awards Gala.

Tom Erickson returned to campus to direct the new Faculty of Computer system, Info and Details Sciences

February 12, 2022 Audrey

The September 2021 announcement of a key fundraising campaign — which will include things like a state-of-the-art building — to enable launch the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s new School of Laptop or computer, Details and Facts Sciences, or CDIS, brought with each other an array of campus luminaries.

Chancellor Rebecca Blank was there that day at the Discovery Developing. So were being John and Tashia Morgridge, alumni who contributed a staggering $125 million to the new organization, and Erik Iverson, CEO of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF, which granted $50 million.

It’s fitting that the one particular ideal equipped to respect the working day in historic context — past getting prologue — was the new school’s founding director, Tom Erickson.

As the very first UW–Madison freshman at any time employed at the engineering building’s computer system lab, Erickson witnessed his future extra than 4 many years ago.

The lab was in the basement of the engineering building. This was the 1970s. Erickson basically realized computers — his significant school in Mondovi, Wisconsin, had a terminal joined to an early laptop or computer at the College of Wisconsin–River Falls.

But the vital was that Erickson’s desk in the engineering lab was following to an previous dot-matrix printer. All the graduate researchers arrived by for their printouts.

“I acquired to fulfill them,” Erickson states. “They have been applying these pc applications to clear up extremely intricate challenges that fairly frankly couldn’t be completed in any other case. It piqued my fascination and was persuasive to me, for confident.”

Erickson went on to a very productive entrepreneurial job in the tech business that took him all over the earth, most not too long ago to Boston at Acquia, a net written content administration program business that had 800 employees and around $175 million in once-a-year earnings when Erickson retired as CEO in 2017.

Photo by Patrick Stutz

Now, for an encore, Erickson has arrive residence to Wisconsin, on the lookout to give back to the location wherever he got his begin.

“I really like the point out of Wisconsin and I enjoy the university,” he states. “It gave me an option I couldn’t have dreamed of.”

Erickson’s father ran a components retailer in Mondovi that was started out in 1905 by Erickson’s excellent-grandfather and is continue to operated by his sister.

Erickson absorbed the smaller-city values, accompanying his father on a pre-dawn farm take a look at to support a farmer who essential his water pump mounted to milk his cows. “You took care of each other,” he suggests.

But his father also shared stories of his far-flung Navy everyday living, as properly as pics and unique coins that stirred in his son a want to see the globe.

As a UW–Madison junior in electrical and laptop engineering, Erickson applied, unsuccessfully, for a cooperative schooling (outdoors the classroom) application in then-Yugoslavia. He had greater luck with multinational power big Chevron Corp.’s co-op plan, which took him to San Francisco.

Early on, he

A lot more details on new adware

December 26, 2021 Audrey

Previous 7 days, I described a new sort of adware that has been infecting PCs of late. I obtained a number of messages about them due to the fact, so it appeared like a excellent chance to deliver additional facts on how to detect these threats and also how to block them before or if they attain your computer.

To people who don’t know, adware as a entire is a variety of application that instantly shows or downloads advertising and marketing material onto a computer. Even though not all is malicious, it can be utilised to have virus infections on to methods or monitor a user’s exercise without the need of his or her knowledge, so it is commonly greatest to keep away from or clear away them if doable. Generally operating an anti-malware scanner like MalwareBytes every single will delete them if they have designed it on to your tough generate. A cost-free variation of MalwareBytes is obtainable for download listed here: https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-down load/thankyou.

Most destructive adware tends to be browser-dependent and needs that you simply click on an undesirable pop-up ad on a web page (or one thing identical) to initiate its virus onto your program. The messages themselves are basically gateways, practically nothing a lot more, nevertheless usually they have panic-driven statements claiming that your technique has presently been infected and that the only way to remedy this trouble is to simply click on them. This is all a hoax, of course, because the an infection arrives only following you click on.

With these new infections, the adware works by using a website’s permissions prompt command (when the web site you are on asks if you want to “Block” or “Allow” notifications) to force individuals infection-causing messages into your Home windows notifications panel (called “press notifications”). Because of this, their messages look much extra reputable and tempting to click on — however the intention is the same as what is actually been pointed out in the browser-centered adware above.

The “drive notifications” referenced listed here are actual Windows messages that ordinarily surface earlier mentioned the clock on your Desktop. Reputable notifications generally pop up when new e mail comes on your computer system or when you have application and operating technique updates to set up. Likewise, you can sync Home windows to social apps and login accounts so that notifications from those people channels will show up as these drive messages as well.

As with most adware, the information conveyed in these malicious notifications is related to what is actually seen in the browser-based variations — that you have an an infection or equivalent lead to for alarm and that clicking the message is the only way to solve the trouble.

As an extra complication, these messages (when allowed to appear) usually look regularly, even regularly, owing to the truth that they do not call for a browser to be open to be exhibited. This may result in you to stress and simply click as properly.

Checking out the use of the Python programming language for details engineering

December 25, 2021 Audrey

Python is one of the most preferred programming languages worldwide. It generally ranks high in surveys — for instance, it claimed the very first place in the Popularity of Programming Language index and came next in the TIOBE index.

The main aim of Python was never world wide web development. Nevertheless, a couple of yrs in the past, application engineers realized the opportunity Python held for this certain intent and the language experienced a huge surge in popularity.

But info engineers could not do their position with no Python, both. Considering that they have a significant reliance on the programming language,it is as significant now as ever to go over how using Python can make details engineers’ workload a lot more manageable and efficient.

Cloud system vendors use Python for applying and managing their companies

Run-of-the-mill difficulties that deal with details engineers are not dissimilar to the ones that details scientists experience. Processing knowledge in its several forms is a important target of awareness for both of those of these professions. From the data engineering perspective, however, we concentrate additional on the industrial processes, this sort of as ETL (extract-remodel-load) employment and facts pipelines. They have to be strongly constructed, trusted, and fit for use.

The serverless computing basic principle lets for triggering facts ETL procedures on demand. Thereafter, physical processing infrastructure can be shared by the people. This will permit them to boost the prices and as a result, lessen the administration overhead to its bare minimal.

Python is supported by the serverless computing products and services of distinguished platforms, which include AWS Lambda Functions, Azure Features and GCP Cloud Capabilities..

Parallel computing is, in turn, needed for the extra ‘heavy duty’ ETL responsibilities relating to difficulties about major information. Splitting the transformation workflows between various worker nodes is basically the only possible way memory-wise and time-wise to achieve the purpose.

A Python wrapper for the Spark motor named ‘PySpark’ is perfect as it is supported by AWS Elastic MapReduce (EMR), Dataproc for GCP, and HDInsight. As significantly as controlling and running the methods in the cloud is anxious, acceptable Software Programming Interfaces (APIs) are uncovered for each and every system. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are employed when carrying out occupation triggering or facts retrieval.

Python is therefore applied across all cloud computing platforms. The language is handy when doing a knowledge engineer’s task, which is to set up knowledge pipelines along with ETL work to recuperate info from several sources (ingestion), approach/mixture them (transformation), and conclusively allow for them to turn out to be accessible for end users.

Using Python for knowledge ingestion

Organization facts originates from a range of sources these kinds of as databases (both SQL and noSQL), flat information (for example, CSVs), other files utilized by corporations (for illustration, spreadsheets), external units, world-wide-web paperwork and APIs.

The huge acceptance of Python as a programming language effects in a wealth of libraries and modules. A person especially fascinating library is Pandas. This is attention-grabbing contemplating it