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GOG is giving away a copy of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for PC — though there is a bit of a catch. You can only get the free copy of the game if you already have it. Still, you get to play The Witcher 3 again, which is always a good thing. Here’s how to get the game, and integrate your other gaming platforms into GOG Galaxy. The promotion is to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Witcher 3‘s release (holy crap, the game is five years old — I feel old now), and it’s available to anyone with a copy of the game on their consoles or PC platform....

The Big G originally released the popular browser tuned for Apple’s new chips yesterday. But folks who downloaded it, weren’t able to use it because it crashed constantly. Later, Chrome engineer Mark Chang said that they’ve paused the rollout for now, and issued a workaround for users who have already downloaded it. [Read: Neural’s market outlook for artificial intelligence in 2021 and beyond] — Elvin ?️‍? (@elvin_not_11) November 17, 2020 Last night, Chang said that issues are now resolved and you can download a stable version of the browser built for M1 chips....

Google has discontinued its flagship phones, which it released less than a year ago in October, The Verge reports. The good news is that Pixel 4 and 4XL owners will continue to get software updates for at least a couple of more years. “Google Store has sold through its inventory and completed sales of Pixel 4 [and] 4 XL,” a Google spokesperson told The Verge. “For people who are still interested in buying Pixel 4 [and] 4 XL, the product is available from some partners while supplies last....

The project is codenamed Cache (hmm, fitting), and is set to launch sometime next year. The accounts will be managed by Citibank, and a credit union at Stanford. According to Google, Citibank will handle the “financial plumbing.” This feels like bit of a dig at Apple, which claimed its new card — which is backed by Goldman Sachs — was created by a tech company and “not a bank. Google’s Caesar Sengupta told WSJ the company wants to “partner deeply with banks and the financial system,” and adds, “If we can help more people do more stuff in a digital way online, it’s good for the internet and good for us....

You heard it right. You’ll be able to send your photos and videos through a chat interface in the app. Google said it was always possible to share photos through links or albums, but it wanted to make the experience of sharing one-off photos easier: While it may seem an intuitive and useful feature at first, a lot of folks use photos or links from Google photos to share it on other platforms such as Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Twitter....

During a demo at Google I/O 2021 on Wednesday, Pichai showcased how LaMDA can enable new ways of conversing with data, like chatting to Pluto about life in outer space or asking a paper airplane about its worst travel experiences. Pichai said LaMDA generates a natural conversation style by synthesizing concepts — like the Horizon spacecraft and the coldness of the cosmos — from its training data, rather than hand-programming them in the model....

Despite having virtually no B2B presence in the quantum computing marketplace, the Mountain View company managed to leverage itself as one of the most important players in the field. Google’s position comes as a bit of a surprise when you consider the competition. D-Wave’s been making quantum computers for about as long as Google has been in business. And both Microsoft and IBM have focused quantum computing ecosystems generating revenue today to offset their massive research expenditures....

As part of his retaliation, German programmer Tobias Frömel (aka “battleck”) released almost 3,000 decryption keys to assist others hit by the Muhstik ransomware, alongside free decryption software, BleepingComputer reports. The thing is, this revenge-hack wasn’t exactly legal. Frömel highlighted this in his original announcement on the BleepingComputer forum yesterday morning, but urged readers to understand that he’s “not the bad guy here.” The Muhstik ransomware hackers have plagued QNAP’s Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices since the end of September....

— Halo (@Halo) August 11, 2020 Developers Team 343 released a statement saying the COVID-19 pandemic was making it “not sustainable” for the team to attempt to release the game during its original holiday release date. To hear them tell it, the game isn’t quite ready for primetime yet. There’s a chance this isn’t just the pandemic — fan reception to early looks at Halo Infinite was somewhat lukewarm, and many criticized the graphics of the demo....

To help Node.js developers achieve the necessary preparedness for an interview, I have put together a list of 15 commonly asked Node.js- and web development-related interview questions. These questions and their answers will also prompt you to brush up on any areas you feel need improvement before the big interview. In this post, we are focusing on questions related to only Node.js; however, bear in mind that Javascript-related questions are very common in Node....

The Nintendo Switch is far and away the most versatile console on the market right now, with its hybrid design and vast game library. If you’re just getting into gaming, it’d be top of my list of recommended hardware — and I suspect there are lots of you who’ve done just that since quarantines and lockdowns have completely changed how we spend our free time. So here are some games to get you started....

Every year automotive journalists tee up what they feel are the most significant new models in a contest known as the North American Car of the Year (NACOTY). In spite of the “car” name and in recognition of the diversity of the automotive market, there are three categories—car, utility and truck. For 2021 a total of 27 news vehicles (or vehicle families in some cases) were nominated, including a significant number of electrified models....

In partnership with independent researchers, password management service NordPass compiled millions of passwords into a dataset to determine the 200 most commonly used passwords around the world in 2021. They analyzed the data and presented results across 50 countries, looking at how popular various choices were in different parts of the world. They also looked at password trends by gender. The findings show password choices are often attached to cultural references....

As some nobody with a guitar once said though, “times are a-changin’.” While I still wouldn’t put the AirPods Max on the top of my over-ear Bluetooth headphone tree (currently, that award would go to Sennheiser’s Momentum 3), I’ve really begun to adore Apple’s cans. But this could change in the headphones’ next generation. Because although I love them, the AirPods Max have flaws. Lots and lots of flaws. Let’s consider one of these that arose last week....

In July 2020 alone, Verizon Media processed 2.23 billion searches in the United States. Search isn’t an online luxury, it’s a digital necessity. While Google dominates, many are keen to see a change of the guard. If search is a must-have, this generation of internet users has some key requirements that other tech companies and upstarts are fulfilling. Mobile-first for the smartphone generation Many of the search engines we use today emerged in an era before the explosive adoption of smartphones, but innovators like Huawei are centering the mobile experience as a priority....

The buggy shared the first audio of the Martian surface in February and has gone on to record five hours of the planet’s sounds. NASA this week released an array of audible delights captured by the six-wheeled spacecraft. The sounds of gusting winds, rattling wheels, and whirring motors provide a new perspective on Mars. They also play key a role in Perseverance’s science mission. Perseverance is equipped with two microphones, both of which are off-the-shelf devices....

Come off it, Ioanna, you say. I hear you. And maybe you’re imagining an aggressive vehicle with firearms attached all around. That was on my mind too. But patent images, recently published in the open database of Russia’s Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (FIPS), show the possible production version of two urban electric minicars: a four- and a three-wheeler. The UV-4 four-wheeler Kalashnikov first showed off its UV-4 four-wheeler back in 2018, initially presented as a prototype at the international forum ARMY....

Scraping data is all the rage nowadays. But what many don’t know is that you don’t need to be a fancy hacker to be able to collect data from websites. In fact, you don’t even need any coding skills. A multitude of tools such as browser extensions exist to alleviate the required technical knowledge. But even if that’s one hurdle too far for you, do not worry. Google will come to the rescue....

The former Space Race rivals of Russia and the US plan to use AI to scan rocks on the Red Planet for signs of life. Eventually, they aim to use the system in future missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. They believe that using AI to analyze the samples and select what to send back to Earth will overcome the challenges of transmitting data between planets. As Eric Lyness, software lead in the Planetary Environments Lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), explained this week: [Read: Scientists built an AI to discover new stars in the quest to explain our galaxy’s origin] The AI system has now been trained to analyze hundreds of rock samples and thousands of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation....

Google has been offering safe browsing protection in its browsers for a while. This essentially means that you’re protected from harmful URLs, or dangerous events that might result in data-stealing There are multiple levels of security provided by Google under this protection feature. Here’s how you can check yours: Open Google Chrome on your desktop. Head to Settings > Security. Scroll down to the Safe browsing section. Under that, you can choose, ‘Enhanced’, ‘Standard’, or ‘No Protection’ option....