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Dead Space, Resident Evil 4, remastered versions of Metroid Prime and Tales of Symphonia, Return to Dream Land Deluxe… In 2023 alone, no less than half a dozen emblematic games will be offered a second youth, not to mention upcoming games like z as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Alone in the Dark Remake.

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The whole point of a new version of a game is to take a memorable or nostalgic experience from the original title and use the latest technologies to bring it to life, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, the game’s producer, told AFP. Resident Evil 4 Remake arrives Friday on PC and the new Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 consoles.

Eighteen years after its first release in 2005 on GameCube, Nintendo’s legacy console, this remastered and modernized version of the 4th opus of the legendary series of horror video games aims to take full advantage of the graphical improvements made possible by current computers.

With a new version we don’t start from a blank page, we have a universe that is being built, a game that already exists and that people have also been able to try and enjoy. The start of development is therefore much faster and we can focus on what we want to improve or enrich, adds Eric Baptizat, director of Dead Space, a survival game that was first launched in 2008.

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Why such a strategy from publishers like Electronic Arts, Nintendo and Capcom, whose catalogs are nevertheless well stocked with novelties and big-budget productions (known as AAA)?

Like what Marvel did with Spiderman [au cinéma, cela permet] Maintaining franchises and making them come alive over time rather than creating endless suites, Cédric Lagarrigue, market expert and advisor to investment bank Alantra, explains to AFP.

It’s going to be a major trend in video games, we’ll have more and more remakes he thinks.

“It makes sense because video games, more so than cinema, are really making technological advances with each console switch. »

— A quote from Cédric Lagarrigue

Lower business risk

From a purely industrial point of view, these types of games have production costs, which are reduced since most of the marketing and design has already been taken care of [par la version originelle]adds Julien Pillot, economist specializing in cultural industries.

“Like cinema before it, video games have reached a stage where they must further dilute the risk of commercial failure. »

— A quote from Julien Pilott

With these complementary games, players are allowed to wait between two AAA games in an industry where companies are increasingly funded and therefore subject to increasing performance demands, he adds.

Playing on the nostalgia rope also allows publishers to build on an already-established fan base and notoriety while also catching up with other players who may have missed out on these iconic titles.

These new releases are aimed at young adults, often in their 30s, who want to re-immerse themselves in the games of their youth. Today, for many, these people find themselves in a situation that allows them to have a budget for games that end up taking them back a bit to childhood, emphasizes Julien Pillot.

“While much of the game’s reimagining is for people familiar with the original game, we also hope that a new generation of gamers who have never played the original title can take this opportunity to experience the essence of Resident Evil 4 to feel [grâce à la nouvelle version]’ adds Yoshiaki Hirabayashi.

Microsoft is determined to bring artificial intelligence to every floor. The company presents a new tool, Bing Image Creator, which allows to generate images from a simple text.

Bing Image Creator // Source: Microsoft

Artificial intelligence is at the center of all efforts at Microsoft. The new Bing is boosted with GPT-4, while Word, Excel, PowerPoint and others are also starting AI with Copilot. With Bing Image Creator, the Redmond-based company is now going one step further. Everything is said in the name.

With Bing Image Creator you are invited to generate images thanks to artificial intelligence, as we already see on the very impressive Midjourney. Note here that Bing Image Creator is based on the same model as Dall-E, an image generator powered by OpenAI – the same box behind GPT-4.

Create images from plain text

This new feature from Bing “allows you to create an image simply by using your own words to describe the image you want to see.” These new interactions happen in the same place as the intelligent text responses that the search engine can provide. “You can now generate written and visual content from chat in one place,” the statement said.

Research has shown that the human brain processes visual information approximately 60,000 times faster than text, making visual tools an essential means of research, creation, and understanding. According to Bing data, images are one of the most searched categories, right after general web search. In the past, searches were limited to images that already existed on the internet. There are hardly any limits to research and creation today.

Bing Image Creator // Source: Microsoft

Bing Image Creator will be available in preview of the new Bing for those who have registered. Initially, the tool will be accessible as part of the creative mode. Then this preview of the feature will “also be available in Microsoft Edge”.

This will make it “the first and only browser with a built-in AI-powered image generator. To use Bing Image Creator in Edge, simply click the Bing Image Creator icon in the sidebar to create your image, or bring it up from Bing Chat in Edge.

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Joana Campos Meteored Portugal 03/21/2023 16:00 5 mins A type of water heavier than Earth’s water has been discovered in a star 1,300 light-years from Earth.

Until a few decades ago The presence of water was considered unique on Earth, and it was actually used as a biosignature – biosignatures are defined as objects, substances, or changes over time that require a biological agent.

Until now it has been assumed that the presence of water on celestial bodies is an index of life, because it was precisely in this liquid that the first organisms appeared on the planet.

Ecuador, the terrible pictures of the earthquake. Great damage and high human toll

We know that today Water is not necessarily a biosignature but a compound present in many bodies, not only in the solar system but also in outer space.

Planets, asteroids, comets and even our moon all have water on their surface, but the explanation of how this compound was created in the cosmos remains a mystery to astrochemists and astrobiologists.

The water cycle in the cosmos

Water was known to travel from gas clouds to planet-forming disks in young stars, and then from comets to planets. However, There is a missing link in this understanding of the water cycle in the cosmos that does not predict how water moves from young stars to comets.

The latest discovery, made by a team of researchers led by John J. Tobin of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, suggests that the “missing link” in determining the origin of water has finally been found.

With the ALMA telescope in Atacama, Chile, The team detected gaseous water in the planet-forming disk around star V883 Orionis. 1300 light years from Earth.

When a cloud of gas and dust forms in the Universe, it tends to collapse under the influence of gravity, resulting in the formation of a star at its center. The result is a star surrounded by a disk called the “planet-forming disk” because it is the nest of asteroids and planets that will later take shape.

Cientistas descobriram água no disco que cerca a protoestrela V883 Orionis, o que sugere que a água do Sistema Solar se formou bilhões de anos antes do Sol https://t.co/Wu8fqUGtrB

— Canaltech (@canaltech) March 8, 2023

Tobin and his team analyzed the planet-forming disk V883 Orionis when they discovered particles of a type of carbonated water that is chemically similar to water on Earth.

On Earth, water normally consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, but the version found by Tobin and his team is a bit heavier, one of the two hydrogen atoms is replaced by deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen.

This type of chemistry provides valuable information for astrochemists, because simple water and heavy water are formed under different conditions, so that it can be determined when and where the connection was formed.

Water is older than the sun

The amount of water measured around V883 Orionis is impressive: according to the researchers There is enough water to fill our oceans 1200 times. But that’s not all ! Its composition is also similar to that of comets in the solar system, suggesting that the compound would have frozen in the clouds of the planetary disc and then agglomerated as a comet.

This team of researchers discovered water in a gaseous state in a star 1,300 light-years from Earth, leading them to conclude that it predates our sun and therefore our solar system.

The results of the study are simply stunning, because they prove that the water is even older than our sun and thus the solar system itself. The water that gave life to water originated in space and then came to earth via comets.

Rufus is a free utility for Windows that allows you to create a bootable version of Windows from a USB stick. Its version is available now and should be of particular interest to IT professionals who want to install Windows 11 on computers without a TPM chip.

Rufus, the utility for Windows that allows you to create bootable USB sticks, enters the beta phase. Testers can take advantage of new features that better meet the needs of newer operating systems like Windows 10. Bad news for older operating systems: Windows 7 and earlier versions are no longer supported.

Rufus is a program well known to computer engineers and other enlightened amateurs. This free software makes it very easy to create “bootable” media, the very ones used to reinstall Windows or even Linux. In a few words, Rufus transfers image files in ISO format of an operating system to a USB stick (mostly). Simply select this media as the startup disk when you restart your computer to enjoy a portable version of Windows.

Rufus 3.22 Beta makes it possible to boot Windows 11 from a USB stick on an incompatible PC

Rufus 3.22 Beta is for advanced users only. To use the new features, you need to compile the code provided on Github. Once this is done, Bitlocker encryption, the feature that secures all data on a hard drive in Windows, can be disabled from the program’s interface.

This feature is in addition to other options like removing the requirement of 4GB of RAM, Secure Boot, a TPM chip, or even an online Microsoft account. In this way it is possible to create a portable version of Windows 11 compatible with computers that do not meet the hardware requirements officially required to use Microsoft’s latest operating system. In addition, Rufus now supports hardware acceleration of the SHA-1 and SHA-256 cryptographic functions. Unfortunately, support for Windows 7, which still powers just over 5% of PCs worldwidealthough it was published fourteen years ago.

Source: NeoWin

Zippyshare, a pioneering free online file hosting and sharing website, is retiring after 17 years of service. Users have two weeks to back up their important files before the final shutdown.

Zippyshare is over! Or almost. The famous free online storage and sharing site was launched in 2006 and will close its doors at the end of March 2023 after 17 years of service, giving users two weeks to save their important files before disappearing forever. Curiously, as their managers explain in a press release published on their blog on March 19, this closure is not due to legal actions arising from complaints from rights holders about the presence of illegally copied files – one of the most common of this type of platforms.. – but, more prosaically, for economic reasons, humbly acknowledging that their model is no longer adapted to the customs of the time …

End of Zippyshare: an outdated business model

In fact, with around 45 million monthly visits, the site has lived entirely on advertising since its inception, offering its services for free in exchange for viewing ads. However, as more and more users install ad blockers — ad-blockers, in technical jargon like AdBlock or uBlock Origin — in their browsers, the number of ads displayed has steadily decreased over the years, forcing Zippyshare admins to always integrate advertising in order to their income to maintain, leading them into a vicious cycle. More recently, Zippyshare executives have had to contend with dramatic increases in energy prices as their utility bills skyrocketed and their operating expenses soared. After all, as they honestly admit, Zippyshare hasn’t evolved much since its inception: its simple interface has become dated and its maximum file size is limited to 500MB, which is little compared to what’s on offer today on similar platforms – and a lot more popular – like MediaFire, Uptobox, 1fichier or Mega.

“The arguably very simple formula of the services we offer is slowly running out. I think every competing file storage service provider on the market looks better, offers better performance and more features. ‘Needs a dinosaur like us’,” explain the Zippyshare administrators , clear. “In the past year, electricity prices have increased by a factor of 2.5, which, together with a large number of servers, leads to a significant increase in costs that we cannot compensate for,” they continue before thankfully ending their farewell message. “You can send us your comments (we will read them all…) to: [email protected]. Thank you for being with us all these years.” Admittedly, there is no shortage of solutions for free online hosting and file sharing these days, but the closure of this emblematic site will surely touch the hearts of the oldest regulars.. .

Microsoft wants to change how Windows 11 applies certain default settings. In fact, in a post published on the Windows Blog, Microsoft has stated that it wants to go further in its approach “which is to give users control over their Windows PC experience”. To achieve this, the company will make several changes and allow developers to take advantage of the openness of its system.

The American company explains that it wants to do everything to give you better control over the items pinned to the desktop, taskbar or start menu. It’s also meant to simplify the process so you can choose which apps to use by default, e.g. B. the web browser. It will therefore change its dialog boxes to unify them, to make them clearer and above all more coherent.

More control soon in Windows 11

Third-party apps, just like Microsoft’s, will soon automatically ask for your permission before pinning anything on your computer or setting themselves as the default program. In order to achieve this, Microsoft is committed to several points. First, the company wants to make sure Windows users can control changes to pinned items, as well as apps to use by default.

The Redmond-based company therefore provides developers with all the necessary tools so that their application can ask you whether you want to pin it or use it as the default application. In addition, Microsoft applications are subject to the same requirements.

These commitments made by Microsoft will result in Windows 11 supporting new features. To make managing default settings easier, the operating system will soon introduce a new system that will automatically direct you to the correct section of Windows settings so you can change the default settings. For example, when a web browser asks if you want to use it as the default browser, Windows automatically redirects you to the correct page in the operating system settings.

©Microsoft

It also changes how items can or cannot be pinned to your desktop, taskbar, or start menu. Microsoft provides developers with an API that automatically displays a notification to users asking them to confirm whether or not they agree to pin an item.

©Microsoft

Over the next few months, Microsoft plans to showcase this new Windows 11 behavior to Insider members on the developer channel. Depending on the feedback received, Microsoft will no doubt adjust its changes before validating them and incorporating them into a future Windows 11 update without question.

A team from the Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan has developed a new software tool to help life scientists analyze animal behavior more effectively. Open-source software LabGym uses AI and deep learning to identify, categorize, and count behaviors defined in various animal model systems.

Scientists measure animal behavior for a variety of reasons, such as to better understand how a particular drug may affect an organism or to map how circuits in the brain communicate to produce a particular behavior.

Researchers in the lab of University of Michigan faculty member Bing Ye, Ph.D., are studying neural development and the defects that lead to brain disorders. They analyze the movements and behavior of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) as a model to study the development and functions of the nervous system. Because fruit flies and humans share many genes, their studies of fruit flies often provide insight into human health and disease.

Yujia Hu, Ph.D., a neuroscientist in Bing Ye’s lab at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute and lead author of the study describing LabGym, the new software, explains:

“Behaviour is a function of the brain. Therefore, analyzing animal behavior provides essential information about brain function and how it changes in response to disease.”

However, manually identifying and counting animal behavior is time-consuming and, on the other hand, very subjective for the researcher analyzing the behavior. Existing software for automatically quantifying animal behavior, meanwhile, presents challenges.

Bing Ye, who is also a professor of cell and developmental biology at the medical school, comments:

“Many of these behavior analysis programs are based on predefined definitions of a behavior. For example, when a Drosophila larva rotates 360 degrees, some programs count a roll. But why doesn’t 270 degrees also matter? Many programs don’t necessarily have the flexibility to count this without the user knowing how to transcode the program..

Replication of the human cognitive process

To overcome these challenges, Yujia Hu and his colleagues set out to develop a new program that better mimics the process of human cognition, “thinks” more like a scientist, and is easier to use for biologists without programming skills.

Researchers provide examples of the behavior they want to analyze. LabGym then uses deep learning to improve its ability to recognize and quantify behavior.

While other research, such as that presented by ETH Zurich last June, allows animal behavior to be analyzed using a single video, the program combines video data with model images.

To help the program recognize behaviors, Yujia Hu created a still image showing the animal’s movement pattern by merging the outlines of the animal’s position at different times. The team found that combining the video data with the sample images increased the program’s accuracy and cognitive flexibility.

Typically, when researchers manually analyze behaviors in a video, they ignore irrelevant information (such as a static background).

LabGym is designed to ignore this background information and consider both the animal’s overall movement and changes in position in space and time, as a human researcher would, and allows for the simultaneous tracking of multiple animals.

Another key feature of LabGym, according to Bing Ye, is its biodiversity because although it was developed with Drosophila, it is not limited to a single species.

He comments:

“Actually, it’s rare. It was written for biologists to adapt to the species and behavior they want to study without the need for programming skills or supercomputers.”

Pharmacologist Carrie Ferrario, Ph.D., offered Bing Ye and her team to test and refine the program in the rodent model system she works with.

As Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Associate Associate Professor of Psychology, she studies the neural mechanisms that contribute to addiction and obesity using rats as a model system. To complete the necessary observation of drug-induced behavior in animals, she and members of her laboratory team relied largely on manual scoring, which, as we have seen, is subjective and takes a long time.

She explains :

“I’ve been trying to solve this problem since grad school, but the technology in terms of artificial intelligence, deep learning, and computers just wasn’t there. This program solved an existing problem for me, but it is also very useful. I see the potential that it can be useful for analyzing animal behavior under almost unlimited conditions.”

The team then plans to further refine the program to improve its performance in even more complex conditions, such as observing animals in the wild.

Sources of the article:

Department of Biological Sciences, University of Michigan.

Learn :“LabGym: Quantifying Custom Animal Behaviors 1 with Holistic Learning-Based Assessment“,
DOI: 10.1016/j.crmeth.2023.100415

authors : Yujia Hu, Carrie R. Ferrario, Alexander D. Maitland, Rita B. Ionides, Anjesh Ghimire, Brendon Watson, Kenichi Iwasaki, Hope White, Yitao Xi and Bing Ye, University of Michigan, and Jie Zhou, University of Northern ‘Illinois .

The open source code and a complete LabGym manual can be found on the GitHub page: https://github.com/umyelab/LabGym

If OpenAI stated that one million netizens tested ChatGPT in the first week of its launch, we can imagine that to date there are closer to tens of millions using the intelligence-based conversation tool frequently. And inevitably, what had to happen happened: the service was interrupted on Monday after a bug was discovered, leaving certain users the possibility of partially accessing other people’s discussions.

ChatGPT saw a new lease of life last week with the arrival of GPT4, which aims to improve the machine’s capabilities and broaden the scope of the tool’s capabilities (e.g. using photos instead of text). The platform had experienced slowdowns as it grew in popularity, but no major bugs have ever been reported until now.

According to a spokesman for OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, some internet users’ conversations were visible in other internet users’ chat history. As soon as the company became aware of the problem, it suspended the service while clarifying that the content of the conversations was not available to other accounts – only their titles. The error would come from the open source software used.

But at this point, OpenAI has not identified the reasons for this mixing of conversations between user accounts.

For the most part, the issue wasn’t that bothersome as it was still possible to use ChatGPT – and the title of chats isn’t usually a privacy issue (especially since external chats don’t mention the identity of their author).

As recently as yesterday, OpenAI paused chat history for everyone to avoid problems with information disclosure between accounts. All was back to normal in the US on Monday night when the OpenAI spokesperson said, “ChatGPT is back online, as is chat history.”

More information should follow in the next few hours so that OpenAI can at least confirm that it has completely fixed the bug at the source of this malfunction.