New restrictions on semiconductor exports to China are scrambling sales and fueling concerns that the Chinese tech giant will become a chip-making powerhouse.

Macworld PDF is a universally spoken language across the business world, but Apple products fall behind with fewer features for editing or annotating PDFs. You don’t need to be tethered to your computer or struggling to use your finger to sign on your phone. You can get a lifetime subscription to PDF Expert for just $139.99. With more than 30 million users and the award of Apple’s App of the Year Runner-up, it’s no surprise that PDF Expert is renowned among Mac users. It’s a fast, reliable, and easy-to-use tool that allows even the not-so-technologically-savvy to complete essential tasks. PDF Expert Premium Plan: Lifetime Subscription (Mac)See Deal PDF Expert allows you to fix typos, insert images, or add links with ease. You can also annotate PDFs. Highlight areas that a contractor needs to fill out or create a custom stamp to speed up any workflow. You can even merge multiple files into a single document or extract individual pages to save as separate files. Whether you’re a student needing to annotate study guides, a freelance worker who fills out a lot of forms, or a business owner trying to streamline processes, PDF Expert is an easy solution. Snag a lifetime subscription to PDF Expert for $139.99 and annotate PDFs like a pro. StackSocial prices subject to change.

The Apple Watch Series 11 will probably arrive this fall alongside the iPhone 17. Here's what the next generation of Apple's smartwatch could bring to the table.The Apple Watch Series 11 could look a lot like the Series 10The Apple Watch is much like the iPhone and other products in Apple's ecosystem, in that it is often the subject of rumors and speculation. With Apple's famous regularity when it comes to releases, the rumor mill expects that the Apple Watch Series 11 will be arriving in the future.Here's what analysts and leakers believe is on the way for Apple's next-gen wearable device. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

The Trump Administration is threatening a hostile takeover of the MTA-led plan to redevelop Penn Station for $7 billion. The important update was reported by Gothamist, who say: "The move will allow Amtrak and the federal government to pursue a developer for the reconstruction and potential expansion of the station."  The plan, which dates to early 2021 at least, was stalled after the pandemic due to the new financial realities of the CRE market in Midtown. Trump acolyte Justin Shubow and his National Civic Art Society group released their own "classically inspired" alternative design last month that would reposition Madison Square Garden. Many are hoping for a renewal on the order of the 2012 plan for King’s Cross Station in London.

While the studio behind Phantom Blade Zero has been clear about designing the upcoming RPG as being closer in gameplay terms to a title like Devil May Cry 5 than it would be to Dark Souls, the studio has mentioned that is taking inspiration from several games, including FromSoftware’s Souls franchise. Speaking to GamesRadar, developer S-Game spoke about how Phantom Blade Zero‘s various aspects have been inspired by Devil May Cry, Souls, and even Resident Evil. Where Devil May Cry was the inspiration behind combat, the Souls franchise is where the studio is taking its cues from for level design. Resident Evil, on the other hand, will serve as the inspiration for the game’s narrative design and general atmosphere. “On the Souls-lite level design side, we are definitely a fan of and inspired by the pre-Elden Ring, interconnected, tight level design,” said a representative from S-Game. They also mentioned that director “Soulframe” Liang studied architecture at school, “so the level design is something that’s very important for us and we want to have very robust levels, have a lot of depth to them, very dense.” Liang himself spoke about how the various inspirations for Phantom Blade Zero came together in different ways. Taking to GamesRadar, he describes the title as being more like a Resident Evil game with an emphasis on fighting with swords. “Before, everyone thought we’re making a Soulslike game,” explained Liang. “So in order to prove we have a totally different combat system for the core gameplay, we’re showcasing these combat demos. But now people have maybe come the other way around, they think it’s a hack-and-slash with no story and you just go kill to the end, but it’s not something like that. It’s more like a Resident Evil but fighting with blades.” Liang also spoke about how exploration will be a core part of the gameplay in Phantom Blade Zero along with its fast-paced action gameplay and character progression. He describes the game’s exploration aspects as coming from a Souls games, while the “vibes” come for Resident Evil. “Anything that is useful and good for us to make our pillar, a playable kung fu movie with exploration and character progression, we’ll make use of it,” he said. “Whether it’s exploration from a Souls game or vibes from Resident Evil or combat from this hack-and-slash game, we’ll take that and bring them together. But the overall experience is still very coherent. It’s not ripped apart from something else.” Ultimately, S-Game wants to bring back classic kung fu action back in its own way. With Phantom Blade Zero, the studio says that its ideologies and principles in game design hold everything together. If one aspect were to fail, it would also bring the rest of the game down with it. “We have deeper ideologies and principles in designing the game,” said Liang. “If we don’t have that, every element we brought from different genres would feel separate and fall apart. One is to bring back the golden age of Chinese kung fu movies, starting from Bruce Lee in the 1970s and into maybe the early 2000s. We want to rekindle this passion for the kung fu movie. The other one, for gaming itself, we want to rediscover the golden age of PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2.” Phantom Blade Zero is currently in development for PC and PS5. While it doesn’t have a release date as of yet, the studio might be targeting a Fall 2026 release window. The studio has also previously revealed that it will take players between 20 and 30 hours to finish.

Fusion Rockets Could Theoretically Cut Our Travel Time to Mars in Half. This U.K. Startup Wants to Give It a Try The company’s ambitious new Sunbird design aims to harness nuclear fusion in space, despite the fact that commercializing such energy on Earth remains a faraway dream A rendering of a Sunbird rocket detaching from its station to dock onto an approaching spacecraft. Pulsar Fusion via YouTube A U.K. startup called Pulsar Fusion has recently unveiled a project it has been developing “in complete secrecy” for the past decade: nuclear fusion-powered rockets called Sunbirds. The company teased the project in a short video of the concept design, which they publicly unveiled at the Space-Comm Expo in London on March 11. “The Sunbird Migratory Transfer Vehicle is designed to cut mission times to Mars by half while offering a reusable, station-keeping capability for deep space operations,” reads a statement from Pulsar. The company hopes to partner with other missions to rapidly deliver cargo to Mars, supplies to lunar orbit, mining equipment to near-Earth asteroids, probes to outer planets and telescopes to deep space. Pulsar Fusion’s vision is for its Sunbirds to be permanently stationed in low-Earth orbit, where they would attach to spacecraft leaving our atmosphere and propel them at unprecedented speeds toward far-off destinations, such as Mars or even Pluto. This could dramatically lessen the timeline and cost of missions across our solar system. At the destination, the nuclear spacecraft would recharge and refuel at another Sunbird station, making them reusable for the return journey. In other words, the Sunbirds would function like space tugboats. Designed to travel at up to 329,000 miles per hour, they would be humanity’s fastest self-propelled objects ever made, as reported by Space.com’s Jeff Spry. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has traveled faster, but that’s only because it got a boost from the sun’s gravity. Pulsar’s models suggest their design could propel a spacecraft with a mass of around 2,200 pounds to Pluto in four years. (The New Horizons probe from NASA took almost a decade to get to Pluto.) MIT astronautics researcher Paulo Lozano is “skeptical” of the fusion design, as he tells Live Science’s Harry Baker. Fusion “has been tricky for many reasons and for a long time, especially in compact devices.” Still, he adds that he has “no technical basis to judge,” until the entire Sunbird designs are made public. Pulsar Fusion Sunbird - Migratory Transfer Vehicle Watch on On Earth, all nuclear power plants operate through nuclear fission: splitting atoms to generate an enormous amount of energy. The fission that takes place in most of these power plants consists of smashing a neutron into a uranium atom. When the uranium atom splits, it releases heat and radiation, as well as more neutrons, which smash into other uranium atoms and continue the reaction. On the other hand, nuclear fusion combines two light atomic nuclei—the cores of atoms, consisting of protons and neutrons—into one heavier atomic nucleus. This process also expels neutrons and energy, but the energy generated by nuclear fusion is much more powerful than fission—and it’s what fuels stars in our universe. In fact, researchers have theorized that fusion could generate nearly limitless amounts of safe and clean energy on Earth, but the scientific advancements that could make this possible on a large scale are still decades away. “It’s very unnatural to do fusion on Earth,” says Richard Dinan, founder and CEO of Pulsar, to CNN’s Jacopo Prisco. “Fusion doesn’t want to work in an atmosphere. Space is a far more logical, sensible place to do fusion, because that’s where it wants to happen anyway.” The fusion reaction that would take place in Sunbirds is different from that currently being studied for energy generation on Earth, according to Live Science. On Earth, scientists are aiming to fuse deuterium and tritium—both isotopes, or versions, of hydrogen. The Sunbird engines, however, would replace tritium with helium-3, a rare helium isotope. The reaction between deuterium and helium-3 would expel protons, and their positive charge would be harnessed for propulsion, as well as power to run a spacecraft’s systems. Aaron Knoll, a researcher in spacecraft engineering at Imperial College London who is not affiliated with Pulsar Fusion, tells CNN that “while we are still some years away from making fusion energy a viable technology for power generation on Earth, we don’t need to wait to start using this power source for spacecraft propulsion.” Pulsar Fusion’s design is in the third phase of its development, with the ambitious aim of testing Sunbird technology in-orbit in 2027. But exactly when the spacecraft design will become fully operational, if it reaches that stage, remains to be seen. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Respawn will be publishing the blog post copied below announcing the migration of Apex Legends to Amazon GameLift Servers on AWS.Read More

Building (or rebuilding) a gaming PC can be difficult. It’s complex stuff, making sure everything’s compatible and whatnot. The next toughest part is finding a deal — and having the patience to wait for price drops without getting so antsy you buy everything at full price (shamefully raises hand). If you’re considering an AMD build, Micro Center has a great deal on a hardware bundle that includes the Ryzen 7 7800X3D (last-gen, but still among the mightiest CPUs around for gaming, according to our review), a motherboard, and RAM. Normally around $579.99, you can snag the bundle in-store only for $499.99 if you have a Micro Center nearby. In addition to the 7800X3D processor ($389.99 by itself), which was only recently supplanted by the higher-end 9800X3D processor, you’ll get an Asus TUF B650-E motherboard (valued at $194.99), plus 32GB of G.Skill Flare X5 DDR5-6,000MHz RAM (valued at $89.99). You’ll save $175 instead of paying $675 for all three components, giving you more pocket change for a GPU. The 7800X3D utilizes the AM5 motherboard socket, used on the newer 9000-series processors. It seems likely that AMD will stick with AM5 in the near future, so you’ll have at least a couple of CPU generations to pick from should you ever need to upgrade. As for the motherboard, it has three M.2 slots (one of which is PCIe 5.0, while the others are PCIe 4.0), support for USB-C ports on the front and back of your case, and Wi-Fi 6E built-in, among other niceties. If you’d prefer to have Corsair Vengeance RAM instead of what’s included with this bundle, you can elect to pay a $15 price increase when you pick up the bundle in-store.

Why QLoRA Changes the Game: A Quick Dive into Efficient Fine-Tuning with BERT 0 like April 18, 2025 Share this post Author(s): Saif Ali Kheraj Originally published on Towards AI. Quantized Low-Rank Adaptation — anyone with a mid-range GPU and some curiosity can now fine-tune powerful models without burning through a budget or a power supply. In this article, we will break down QLoRA in plain language. No technical jargon overload, just clear ideas, relatable examples, and a little fun along the way. Let’s start with a quick comparison: Adapters: Instead of retraining the whole model, adapters insert small, trainable blocks. Think of them as sticky notes added to the original book.LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation): A smarter version that fine tunes just a few key parts of the model — Wq and Wv because they significantly influence the attention computation. Think of it as just rewriting key points or summary in a book instead of the whole story.QLoRA: It applies LoRA techniques to a model that is already compressed using 4 bit quantization(we will go through it). It is efficient, elegant, and powerful. QLoRA stands for Quantized Low-Rank Adaptation. It is a method for fine tuning large language models (LLMs) in a way that is: Memory efficientFriendly to consumer level GPUsStill powerful and accurate It combines two ideas: quantization (compressing data) and low-rank adaptation (tuning only a small part of the model). The result? A streamlined fine… Read the full blog for free on Medium. Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming a sponsor. Published via Towards AI Towards AI - Medium Share this post

Warning: this review contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 1.Daredevil: Born Again brings back Matt Murdock as the costumed protector of Hell’s Kitchen after an overly long absence and does a mostly solid job of capturing what made the original 2015-2018 Daredevil series on Netflix so good. Essentially acting as a fourth season of that show, Born Again has the same excellent lead actors, gritty drama, and hardcore fight scenes that the series made its name on, and all of that works as well as ever when it’s firing on all cylinders. However, there are times during its nine-episode run when it’s clear that this revival is missing a few of the key ingredients that made those first three seasons such standout superhero TV. Much like the Man Without Fear swinging from New York City rooftops, Born Again has its ups and downs, but thankfully in the end it manages to land on its feet. Reprising their roles as hero and villain are Charlie Cox’s charming and guilt-ridden Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Vincent D'Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, who speaks with an imposing voice as coarse as a limestone boulder and stands just as tall as one. Born Again offers a fresh spin on their classic rivalry that supercharges the story with an endless supply of juicy drama. The shocking assassination of Murdock’s best friend Foggy Nelson causes him to give up being Daredevil and fully dedicate himself to doling out justice with his lawyering skills instead of his fists, but hanging up the horns for good proves impossible when Wilson Fisk makes a surprise return and becomes the new mayor of New York City. (There was a time when a convicted felon winning a major political office might’ve seemed unrealistic, but today it’s maybe a tad on-the-nose.) PlayAn early scene between the pair has them taking stock of the other’s new status quo and delivering veiled threats about what might happen should they slip back into their old ways. Though they’re just sitting in a cafe, it may as well be an active battlefield. Born Again is at its best when it pits these bitter enemies against one another as lawyer and mayor with the vigilante and villain just under the surface, forcing them to pursue their ambitions in new ways, all while struggling with their true selves starting to bubble up. Even during a rough patch of mid-season episodes, this marvelous core remains rock solid.Even during a rough patch of mid-season episodes, this marvelous core of Murdock vs Fisk remains rock solid.“There are several other highlights of the early episodes worth mentioning: Clips from BB Urich’s people-on-the-street social media news show, The BB Report, give us a rare glimpse at how the common people of the Marvel Cinematic Universe feel about all the crazy superhero happenings in their city. That adds a much-needed personal texture to a world where bystanders are usually little more than collateral damage. A standalone episode in the middle of the season about Murdock cleverly foiling a bank robbery (without becoming Daredevil) is a pure delight from start to finish, even if it occupies a precious slot in a short season without moving the main plot forward. And as Murdock’s new love interest, Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), becomes dangerously entwined in his life, her therapist skills ensure she’s always ready with a piercing commentary on his masked persona (without even knowing she’s doing it). Meanwhile, Fisk reuniting with his beloved wife Vanessa and contending with the crime lords he left behind to enter politics leads to some of the season’s most vicious moments that feel ripped from your favorite mob movie. It’s a good thing Born Again has such a sturdy foundation, because it allows the overarching story being told across the entire season to remain strong even while it frustrates with how reluctant it is to give starved fans the full-blown return we’d waited so long for. Murdock spends almost half of the season without actually suiting up, and when he finally does there are a few action scenes where Daredevil is briefly rendered in unconvincing, Gumby-like CGI. That’s a worrying error to make on a show that originally earned acclaim for its impressive, mostly practical fight sequences, but fortunately it’s not too pervasive; most of the fight scenes are appropriately intense, crunchy, and extra violent compared to what Disney+ has served up in its Marvel TV era. In fact, the season starts with a jaw-dropping brawl between Daredevil and Bullseye that should by all rights go down as one of the best superhero/supervillain fights the MCU has to offer. The season starts with a jaw-dropping brawl between Daredevil and Bullseye that's one of the best the MCU has to offer.“Fans of the Netflix Daredevil series will definitely be feeling the absence of Murdock’s two closest allies, Foggy Nelson and Karen Page. With Foggy dead and Karen’s grief causing her to move away, a new cast of supporting characters are introduced, but they’re a hit and miss bunch that can’t fill the hole left by two thirds of Nelson, Murdock & Page. The aforementioned Glenn and BB (Genneya Walton) are great, as is the blunt Commissioner Gallo (Michael Gaston), who stands as the sole example of a law enforcement officer with integrity by standing up to Fisk and his detestable boot-licker Danny Blake (Michael Gandolfini). Then we have Murdock’s detective ally Cherry and Fisk’s right-hand man Buck, who are so forgettable that you may not know who I’m referring to even if you’ve seen the show. And while there was plenty of potential in the murderous mural painter Muse, who was the threat of a two-episode arc, he wound up being as developed as a rough pencil sketch.Daredevil Episode 5 and 6 GalleryLooking at the season as a whole, it sticks out that the first and last two episodes are a cut above the rest in quality. They’re shot with more style and creativity, and they’re scripted and executed so well that it almost feels like they’re from a different show. Turns out there’s a good reason for that: Born Again was given a massive creative overhaul midway through production that resulted in new episodes being shot. That may explain the uneven nature of the season, where it starts with a banger, meanders through the White Tiger- and Muse-centric episodes, and then springs back to life for a big finish. It’s impossible to know how it would’ve gone without that reworking, but from where we’re sitting on the outside looking in, the final result got the job done despite a bit of a patchwork feel. It ends on a very, very high note that inspires confidence season two will be more consistent.“A big part of that is that, for all its flaws, it at least ends on a very, very high note that inspires confidence season two will be more consistent in that regard. In particular, a return appearance from Jon Bernthal’s Punisher in the finale injects the story with an extra big dose of adrenaline and chaos, treating us to another polarized team-up with “Red” and showcasing the chemistry between Bernthal and Cox. Even when Frank Castle is not on screen throughout the season, his presence is felt thanks to Fisk’s anti-vigilante squad of brazenly corrupt cops appropriating his skull symbol—a commentary on a misguided real-world practice that the show tackles head-on.You know things are bad when the Punisher shows up, and, indeed, the last episode leaves Daredevil on what may as well be his own personal Hell on Earth, all thanks to Mayor Fisk enacting his master plan. It’s a doomsday scenario so uniquely tailored to Matt Murdock’s character with its mix of legal maneuvering and criminal masterminding that it’s a little less preposterous that a super-powered Avenger doesn’t swoop (or swing) in to save the day than it might’ve been.