Tag: aimed
A new wave of basketball movies is aimed at expert-level fandom
Ben Affleck’s Air, Adam Sandler’s Hustle, and a courtful of new sports dramas focus on a bigger picture
Amazon’s HQ2 Aimed to Show Tech Can Boost Cities. Now It’s on Pause
Son Heung-min: Tottenham condemn ‘utterly reprehensible’ racist abuse aimed at forward
Rode’s first headset is aimed at creators and gamers
Rode only dipped into headphones last year, but now it’s ready to unveil its first headset — and this time it’s courting gamers in addition to creatives. The NTH-100M takes the familiar design of the NTH-100 but adds a detachable condenser microphone. It’s too early to say if the hardware is truly “broadcast-grade,” as Rode claims, but the company’s reputation for mics bodes well if you want quality audio when you’re chatting with teammates or hosting a livestream. You can even buy the boom mic separately (as the NTH-Mic) if you already have the headphones.
The design will otherwise seem familiar. Rode claims the 40mm dynamic drivers are designed for accurate frequency response with minimal distortion. The NTH-100M might be your pick if you want a neutral sound for editing podcasts and videos. You won’t get perks like noise cancellation or Bluetooth, but the headset will be surprisingly comfortable. When we tried the NTH-100, we found the cooling gel and other design touches to help for extended listening sessions.
The NTH-100M will retail for $189 which is $50 more than the headphones it’s based on. If you already have the NTH-100, you can snag the NTH-Mic separetely for $69. This means if you were holding out and can make use of the mic, the combo deal represents a $20 saving. Or, for that matter, you could always buy the base 100 for listening and upgrade when you’re ready to create content.
The NTH-100M is also a unique product in Rode’s lineup. While it’s not part of the company’s Rode X gaming brand, it’s clearly aimed as much at gamers and Twitch streamers as it is musicians and podcasters. In that sense, it straddles the line between consumer and creative in a way that even the headphones didn’t quite manage.
PikaOS Is a Next-Gen Linux Distribution Aimed Specifically Towards Gamers
Next comes the Recommended Additions, where you can install the likes of: PikaOS Game Utilities is a meta package that installs Steam, Lutris, GOverlay, MangoHud, Wine, Winetricks, vkBasalt, and other gaming-centric tools; Microsoft TrueType fonts for better Windows font emulation; Blender for creating 3D images; OBS Studio for streaming; Kdenlive for non-linear video editing; Krita for painting; and LibreOffice for productivity. In the Optional Steps tab, you can add AMD proprietary drivers, ROCm drivers, Xone drivers, and Proton GE (for Steam and Wine compatibility). Finally, the Look And Feel tab allows you to customize themes, layouts, and extensions. The layouts section is pretty nifty, as it allows you to configure the GNOME desktop to look and feel like a more traditional desktop, a MacOS-like desktop, a Windows 11 layout, a throwback GNOME 2 desktop, and even a Ubuntu Unity-like desktop.
As far as pre-installed software goes, it’s pretty bare bones (until you start adding titles from the Recommended Additions tab in the Welcome App). You’ll find Firefox (web browser), Geary (email), Pidgin (messaging), Weather, Calculator, Cheese (web camera software), Rhythmbox, Contacts, a few utilities, and basic games. However, installing new apps is quite simple via the Software Manager app. Of course, the focus of PikaOS is games. When you install the PikaOS Game Utilities, you’ll get Steam installed, which makes it easy to play an endless array of games on the Linux desktop. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that when you launch the PikaOS Game Utilities installation, it opens a terminal window to run the installation. Give this plenty of time to complete and, in the end, you can launch Steam, log in to your Steam account, and start playing. Just remember, the first time you launch the Steam app, it will take a moment to update and configure. But once it’s up and running… let the games begin.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Train strikes: RMT rejects offer aimed at averting festive strikes
HEIs encouraged to apply for €12m EIT fund aimed at unlocking new ideas
The EIT is linked to Horizon Europe, the EU’s research and innovation initiative. Successful applicants under this call will be notified in May 2023.
Read more: HEIs encouraged to apply for €12m EIT fund aimed at unlocking new ideas
Twitter layoff lawsuit is aimed at preventing a repeat of Tesla layoffs
Current and former Twitter employees began a class action lawsuit on Thursday concerning the current wave of high-profile layoffs at Twitter. The suit claims that the embattled social media company is in violation of labor laws, particularly federal and state versions of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. The filing also notes that one plaintiff did not receive any severance pay.
Twitter, the suit claims, failed to give the legally required 60-day notice about impending job cuts to employees, as well as the California Employment Development Department, which was also supposed to be notified according to state law. But the suit may not end up before a judge and could be viewed less as a case for the courts, and more as a negotiating tactic aimed at protecting those who are subject to these layoffs, organized by a lawyer who has sued on behalf of Elon Musk’s former workers in the past.
A similar lawsuit against Tesla, where Musk is CEO, was moved out of the public eye and into arbitration on Friday. The round of layoffs at Tesla that led to the suit occurred back in June.
You’ll recall that Musk acquired the formerly publicly-traded company Twitter, Inc. last week after a drawn-out haggling process that lasted months. The finalization of that sale turned Twitter into the property of the world’s richest person. So on Thursday, Musk used the sudden, unilateral power he wields over his favorite toy to begin the process of liquidating the jobs of roughly 3,700 human people, or half the company.
Twitter founder and ex-CEO Jack Dorsey, for his part, seems eager to take on the blame for these layoffs instead of Musk. He tweeted on Saturday “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that.”
The lawyer organizing the suit, Shannon Liss-Riordan, told a local ABC News affiliate in Boston on Friday that this action was preemptive. She anticipated that workers were vulnerable to these alleged violations based on previous business practices around layoffs at Tesla, which are cited in the Twitter suit. Those layoffs, Liss-Riordan said, “were done without any notice.” She also claimed that Musk “is an employer who has a history of thumbing his nose at federal labor laws.”
At Tesla, Liss-Riordan claims, “Employees were immediately asked to sign away all of their rights for a week or two of severance pay, even though the federal and state WARN Act requires 60 days severance pay when there is a mass layoff,” she said.
This time around, Liss-Riordan told Bloomberg on Friday, Musk “is making an effort to comply” with the law. “I am pleased that Elon Musk learned something from the lawsuit we brought against him at Tesla,” she said.
Musk claims that everyone “exited” in this round of layoffs received an offer including “3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.” But it’s not yet clear what sort of agreements laid-off employees have to sign in order to become the recipients of Musk’s generosity.
According to The Washington Post, it appears employees are being subject to a practice called “pay in place of notice,” in order to stay roughly within the bounds of the law. Instead of warning them 60 or 90 days in advance that layoffs are coming, this plan pays them through 60 or 90 days and keeps them employed on paper for all that time, even though they’re not working anymore. But the Post also notes that according to The Labor Department, this actually still violates the law.
New York lawyer Misty Marris told the legal blog Law & Crime that citing the Tesla layoffs in the suit against a different company controlled by Musk is unusual. Also unusual, according to Marris, is a request in the suit for a court order requiring Twitter to advise laid-off employees of their rights under the WARN ACT.
“In general,” Marris further explained to Law & Crime, “there are clauses in severance agreements that give employees time to contemplate the severance agreement and also to assess that they fully read and understand the agreement.”
But far from being unusual, this round of layoffs itself appears to be in keeping with Musk’s established strategy for putting people out of work, and keeping the ensuing legal matters out of the actual courts. It worked when he did it at Tesla. Let’s see if it works again.