Web shop compromised with a skimmer, putting countless people at risk.

Large criminal group was seen operating in the LATAM region.

Two big, playful brands celebrated their 50th anniversary this year: Hello Kitty and Rubiks Cube. The iconic cat (thats actually a girl dressed as a cat) had a lot of celebrations and collaborations this year. The equally iconic colorful cube also released several products to commemorate a milestone year for them. And before the year ends, these two unveiled a collaboration that would please fans of either or both of them: a Hello Kitty Cuber.Design: Spin MasterThis official Rubiks Cube is a fully solvable and limited edition cuber that adds a pretty cute twist to it. Instead of the normal colorful cubes its known for, you get a mostly white 3 x 3 cube (6 sides of 9 squares) that has minimalist illustrations of items like clouds, bows, and of course the facial features of Hello Kitty. Youre supposed to combine math, art, science, and a bit of kawaii to eventually solve it. Just like with the Rubiks Cube, youll get challenged (or frustrated, depending on how you look at it) until you are able to solve it and create the 6 faces of the Hello Kitty design its meant to show off. Once you finish it, you can attach this character head to a stand that is her body and put on the iconic red bow on her as well. You can display it with pride or also just challenge yourself to do it over and over again.The Hello Kitty Rubiks Cube is available at Barnes & Nobles stores for around $20. In case cute cats arent your thing, there are also several other Rubiks Cube Cubers from Sanrio, Marvel, DC Comics, and other pop culture properties available. The post Hello Kitty and Rubiks Cube collaborate on a cute kitty cuber first appeared on Yanko Design.

It was an era in which geometric shapes and new technologies revolutionised lettering forever. Our experts look back on the best typefaces of the 1960s.

It's natural to be suspicious of a company offering to erase your data online, especially if most other companies exist to profit from your data. Learn why Incogni is trustworthy.Is Incogni legit? Learn why you can trust it with fighting data brokers. Image source: IncogniChances are you've realized that all of your data is available and for sale online. Data brokers buy and sell user data as a commodity and whether it's used for ad targeting, stalking, or identity theft isn't a consideration.That's why it's important to reduce your digital footprint, thus reducing the data available to gather and sell. However, that's only part of the solution for increased data privacy. Continue Reading on AppleInsider

Yoshio Taniguchi, the architect of MoMAs 2004 redesign and expansion, has died at the age of 87. The New York Times reported the news,along with more details about his journey to the surprise 1997 commission win,following his death from pneumonia on December 16th.Taniguchi was born to a prominent architect father in Tokyo in 1937 and studied at the Harvard GSDbefore returning to Japan in 1964. Significant museum projects include the Ken Domon Museum of Photography and the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures at the Tokyo National Museum. His only other American work is the Asia Society Texas Center in Houston. Taniguchi was the secondIsamu Noguchi Award winner and dedicated the Yoshiro and Yoshio Taniguchi Museum of Architecture in Kanazawa in 2019.

If youve just unwrapped a new Xbox Series X or Series S for Christmas, youll have enough storage out of the box to download several games. But youll quickly feel the squeeze from 100GB-plus installs, especially if you tend to keep a heavy rotation. Expansion cards are your only relief on Xbox consoles if youre playing titles optimized for Series X/S. Thankfully, you can get a 2TB expansion card cheaper than ever, with Western Digitals WD_Black C50 going for $189.99 ($70 off) at Amazon. You can also get it in 512GB for $69.99 ($10 off) and 1TB for $109.99 ($48 off). That said, the 2TB model is the better deal in the long run.RelatedBecause the Series X and Series S use a proprietary storage format, you cant use an external SSD, an internal NVMe SSD (as you could on the PS5), or a standard external hard drive to play newer games that are optimized for those consoles. You can use those hard drives to store Series X/S games, but expansion cards like the C50 are the only ones you can actually play them from. Thats because they support the platforms velocity architecture, which has a minimum speed requirement and uses unique hardware and software tricks to enable console features like Quick Resume, not to mention other benefits for developers. Anyway, you dont need to be a computer science major to understand the bottom line: if you want more storage for your Series X/S games, youll need an expansion card.WD_Black C50 Expansion Card for Xbox Series X / S$70$8013% off$70$70$8013% offWestern Digitals storage expansion cards for Xbox Series X / S consoles are speedy, plug-and-play cards that match the performance of the consoles onboard SSDs. They offer a slightly lower-cost alternative to Seagates expansion cards, which were the only game in town for years.A few more dealsNow through December 31st, home decor brand Umbra is running a sitewide sale that takes 20 percent off most products in its store, including the Cono portable smart lamp we fell in love with at IFA last year thats down to $76 ($19 off) at Umbras online store, for example. Sadly, the taller $130 Cup smart lamp with its convenient organizer for a base isnt discounted, but the Cono is an intriguing tabletop RGB lamp with an X-shaped stand that lets you shine the light vertically or horizontally. As Nanoleaf helped create it, thats the app youll use for manual remote control over Bluetooth. But because its also Matter-ready, you can use voice commands and set lighting schedules when its connected to a compatible smart home ecosystem.Although theres a newer model with faster polling rates and USB-C charging, the original Logitech G Pro X Superlight is still one of the best gaming mice you can buy. Its starting around $79.99 (50 percent off) right now at Amazon, Best Buy, and Woot, which is an all-time low price. Through December 29th, Woot is taking an extra $5 off with code LOGITECHFIVE. The Superlight is named for its 63-gram weight, but it drops some fan-favorite features to get there, such as RGB, dedicated DPI buttons, and a weighted scroll wheel. However, you still get five programmable buttons (including two mounted on the left edge) and a 25,600 DPI Hero sensor that offers far more optical resolution than most gamers need. The mouse lasts up to 70 hours per charge, though it uses micro-USB for recharging.The Beats Pill is matching its all-time low of $99.95 ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. Apples refreshed Bluetooth speaker updates the line with features like two-way USB-C charging and lossless audio. It also has native support for some iOSandAndroid features, including each operating systems Find My feature and access to Siri and Google Assistant, but you cant initiate either via voice. The speaker is built for extended outdoor outings, too, with a battery that lasts up to 24 hours per charge and IP67 protection against water and dust. Read our review.

LG has developed a new lamp that doubles as an indoor garden. The lamp, which LG will show off at CES in January, serves as an adjustable grow light for the tray of up to 20 plants beneath it, while also brightening up your room.It has two different lighting modes: downward-facing lighting during the day that helps grow your plants, and upward-facing lighting at night to help brighten up your home. The lamp comes equipped with a 1.5-gallon water tank and automatically dispenses the right amount of water and nutrients for the number and variety of plants being grown, according to LG. LG made a side table-style grow light, too. Image: LGLG is also showing off a shorter, side table-style grow light at CES, which similarly puts a grow lamp above a bundle of plants. The devices are compatible with LGs ThinQ app, letting you adjust light settings and manage cultivation schedules while youre not at home.This isnt the first time LG has dabbled in creating indoor gardening technology. The company launched an indoor cultivator called the LG Tiiun in 2019, before following up with much more compact iterations. LG says its new lamp has a larger water capacity than its previous indoor planters, but it doesnt mention any details about how much it will cost, or when it will actually ship.

2024 will go down as the year Netflix made its huge push into sports. It was the exclusive home for the disgusting-but-cant-look-away hot dog eating contest between Joey Chestnut and his rival, Takeru Kobayashi. The streamer also broadcast the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match that would have been abysmally boring if not for the bloody womens match right before the main event. Then there are the million-dollar deals Netflix struck with the WWE and NFL to bring even more live sports to the platform.Thankfully, Netflix also added a healthy amount of original programming, movies, TV shows, anime, and documentaries thatll be much easier to watch. So heres a list of Netflixs best shows and movies to watch in case you never get past the buffering icon.Dan Da DanIts hard to recommend anime nowadays, especially to folks looking to get into the genre. A lot of shows have gotten simply too quirky, well say, to recommend to the average person. Dan Da Dan does not fix this problem at all. It blows beyond quirky into weird as hell territory, featuring ghosts, magic, alien abductions, and penis abductions, all within the first 25-minute episode and it rules. Despite Dan Da Dan being about the supernatural shenanigans that ensue when a girl (who believes in ghosts but not aliens) befriends a boy (who believes in aliens but not ghosts), its actually a true-blue romance anime. It is so much fun watching the two main characters deal with their burgeoning affection for each other that you dont mind (or are, in fact, delighted by) the turbo horny weirdness of literally everything else in the show.ArcaneThe tagline for Arcane season 2 should be Everybody is really, really bad at this. Bad at communication, bad at relationships, and definitely bad at staving off a civil war. Season 2 picks up right after the events of the first, in which everyone has to deal with the fallout of Jinxs attack on Piltovers council. This seasons events feel very ripped from the headlines, concerning a simmering class war about to boil over and whether such a struggle can be resolved peacefully. Though there were some brilliant emotional moments between Vi and her sister Jinx or Vi and her girlfriend Caitlyn, I didnt feel much connection tomost of the main cast. Even still, Netflix and Riot told a really good, complete story in two seasons, filled with superslick fight sequences that more than made up for my antipathy for the cast.The Great British Baking ShowI thought I was going to have to caveat this recommendation by saying I know this show appears on this list every year. But I was surprised to find out that The Great British Baking Show has never been featured in The Verges Best of lists. And to that, I say all of my colleagues are monsters. The Great British Baking Show is hands-down the best annual competition show since Eurovision. Every year, Britain manages to find 12 of the most wholesome humans to compete in a series of challenges baking delicious-looking foods most Americans have never heard of. After years of watching this show, Im still not clear on what the hell a pudding is, but damned if Im not gonna cheer these wonderful and talented people on each week. Image: NetflixInterview with the VampireYes, technically this show came out in 2022. But Interviews first season debuted on Netflix this year, exposing it to a much wider audience. This television adaptation adds some interesting updates and twists to Anne Rices 1976 novel. The main character, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson), is no longer a white slave owner but a Black man hustling his way through 1910s Louisiana. There, he meets the enigmatic Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), and the two begin a torrid affair exacerbated by the racial tensions of the time and the fact that Lestat is a terribly eccentric and dramatic Frenchman who is also a vampire. Interview with the Vampire is easily the best drama television show joining rarified air enjoyed by Severance and Succession. It is certainly the best acted show on television, with incredibly moving performances from Reid, Anderson, Bailey Bass, Eric Bogosian, and just about everyone else.Godzilla Minus OneThis is another came out in another year but debuted on Netflix this year recommendation. Its one of the few Godzilla movies guaranteed to make you sob like a baby. If theres a list of superlatives, this movies going on it. Minus One is a retelling of Godzillas first appearance in Japan shortly after the end of World War II. Most of the movies runtime barely even features Godzilla but instead focuses on the struggles of his human victims. This choice heightens Godzillas impact when he finally shows up. And when he does, it doesnt matter if youre watching this with theater-quality sound or just with your TVs speakers, youll feel the needle drop of Akira Ifukubes iconic theme song in your liver. Its so chilling.Culinary Class WarsNetflix has been importing a goodly number of shows from Asia, which is great to satisfy my historical drama habit (shout out The Double and The Princess Weiyoung). But Ive discovered some of the reality shows are also great watches, too, like Physical: 100 and Culinary Class Wars. In Culinary Class Wars, a gaggle of up-and-coming chefs (designated as Black Spoons), compete against Koreas elite culinary masters (White Spoons). The Black Spoons are known only by an alias that describes their skills and achievements and will earn the right to have their real name known (and a big cash prize) if they can triumph over the White Spoons. The Black Spoons are true underdogs going by nicknames like Comic Book Chef, a guy who uses recipes he learned from manga, or Master of School Meals, an older woman who spent decades running school cafeterias. I love it when they overcome the odds to beat the White Spoons.The Remarkable Life of IbelinAfter 20 years of World of Warcraft, its well known how the game has brought people together but sometimes people underestimate just how much. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin tells the story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian man born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Steens parents lament that their son was unable to participate in many of the activities of daily life, unaware of the rich life he constructed for himself roleplaying World of Warcraft. After Steens passing at 25, his parents discover a blog he wrote chronicling his life and are overwhelmed by the messages they receive from his Warcraft friends explaining just how much Steen known to them as Ibelin impacted their lives. With the help of voice actors, animators, Steens blog, and the archived chat logs between Ibelin and his online friends, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin recreates Ibelins many World of Warcraft adventures in a way that imparts a true appreciation for just how much gaming can change peoples lives for good.The GentlemenGuy Ritchie director of Lock Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch makes his Netflix debut with The Gentlemen. It chronicles the struggle of the Horniman family, led by Edward Eddie Horniman (Theo James), who discovers that his father, the 14th Duke of Halstead, has been keeping their land-rich-but-cash-poor family afloat by allowing a marijuana growth and distribution business to operate on their land. The Gentlemen isnt the best gangster television show you can watch on Netflix that distinction belongs to Peaky Blinders but its generally fun watching James and his no-account brother (Daniel Ings) come up with clever ways to stay one step ahead of the rival gangsters coming for their share of Englands weed industry.Carry-OnA late addition to Netflixs lineup of originally produced movies, and unlike some of its big stinkers this year like Atlas or Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver, its damn entertaining. Carry-On stars Taron Egerton as a shiftless TSA agent trying to show his girlfriend hes serious about his career after a surprise pregnancy announcement. But hes forced into a deadly confrontation with a terrorist played to chilling effect by Jason Bateman who threatens to kill his girlfriend and the thousands of holiday travelers passing through LAX on Christmas Eve if he doesnt let a bomb suitcase through security. Carry-On is very much a dad action movie but with much better execution. Its also very clearly a TSA propaganda movie, designed to remind travelers this holiday season that everybody would get to their destinations with a lot less stress if they remembered that TSA agents arent personally out to get them and are just trying to do their jobs.

Autoregressive (AR) models have changed the field of image generation, setting new benchmarks in producing high-quality visuals. These models break down the image creation process into sequential steps, each token generated based on prior tokens, creating outputs with exceptional realism and coherence. Researchers have widely adopted AR techniques for computer vision, gaming, and digital content creation applications. However, the potential of AR models is often constrained by their inherent inefficiencies, particularly their slow generation process, which remains a significant hurdle in real-time applications.Among many concerns, a critical one that AR models face is their speed. The token-by-token generation process is inherently sequential, meaning each new token must wait for its predecessor to complete. This approach limits scalability and results in high latency during image generation tasks. For instance, generating a 256256 image using traditional AR models like LlamaGen requires 256 steps, translating to approximately five seconds on modern GPUs. Such delays hinder their deployment in applications that demand instantaneous results. Also, while AR models excel in maintaining the fidelity of their outputs, they struggle to meet the growing demand for both speed and quality in large-scale implementations.Efforts to accelerate AR models have yielded various methods, such as predicting multiple tokens simultaneously or adopting masking strategies during generation. These approaches aim to reduce the required steps but often compromise the quality of the generated images. For example, in multi-token generation techniques, the assumption of conditional independence among tokens introduces artifacts, undermining the cohesiveness of the output. Similarly, masking-based methods allow for faster generation by training models to predict specific tokens based on others, but their effectiveness diminishes when generation steps are drastically reduced. These limitations highlight the need for a new approach to enhance AR model efficiency.Tsinghua University and Microsoft Research researchers have introduced a solution to these challenges: Distilled Decoding (DD). This method builds on flow matching, a deterministic mapping that connects Gaussian noise to the output distribution of pre-trained AR models. Unlike conventional methods, DD does not require access to the original training data of the AR models, making it more practical for deployment. The research demonstrated that DD can transform the generation process from hundreds of steps to as few as one or two while preserving the quality of the output. For example, on ImageNet-256, DD achieved a speed-up of 6.3x for VAR models and an impressive 217.8x for LlamaGen, reducing generation steps from 256 to just one.The technical foundation of DD is based on its ability to create a deterministic trajectory for token generation. Using flow matching, DD maps noisy inputs to tokens to align their distribution with the pre-trained AR model. During training, the mapping is distilled into a lightweight network that can directly predict the final data sequence from a noise input. This process ensures faster generation and provides flexibility in balancing speed and quality by allowing intermediate steps when needed. Unlike existing methods, DD eliminates the trade-off between speed and fidelity, enabling scalable implementations across diverse tasks.In experiments, DD highlights its superiority over traditional methods. For instance, using VAR-d16 models, DD achieved one-step generation with an FID score increase from 4.19 to 9.96, showcasing minimal quality degradation despite a 6.3x speed-up. For LlamaGen models, the reduction in steps from 256 to one resulted in an FID score of 11.35, compared to 4.11 in the original model, with a remarkable 217.8x speed improvement. DD demonstrated similar efficiency in text-to-image tasks, reducing generation steps from 256 to two while maintaining a comparable FID score of 28.95 against 25.70. The results underline DDs ability to drastically enhance speed without significant loss in image quality, a feat unmatched by baseline methods.Several key takeaways from the research on DD include:DD reduces generation steps by orders of magnitude, achieving up to 217.8x faster generation than traditional AR models.Despite the accelerated process, DD maintains acceptable quality levels, with FID score increases remaining within manageable ranges.DD demonstrated consistent performance across different AR models, including VAR and LlamaGen, regardless of their token sequence definitions or model sizes.The approach allows users to balance quality and speed by choosing one-step, two-step, or multi-step generation paths based on their requirements.The method eliminates the need for the original AR model training data, making it feasible for practical applications in scenarios where such data is unavailable.Due to its efficient distillation approach, DD can potentially impact other domains, such as text-to-image synthesis, language modeling, and image generation.In conclusion, with the introduction of Distilled Decoding, researchers have successfully addressed the longstanding speed-quality trade-off that has plagued AR generation processes by leveraging flow matching and deterministic mappings. The method accelerates image synthesis by reducing steps drastically and preserves the outputs fidelity and scalability. With its robust performance, adaptability, and practical deployment advantages, Distilled Decoding opens new frontiers in real-time applications of AR models. It sets the stage for further innovation in generative modeling.Check out the Paper and GitHub Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. Dont Forget to join our60k+ ML SubReddit. Asif RazzaqAsif Razzaq is the CEO of Marktechpost Media Inc.. As a visionary entrepreneur and engineer, Asif is committed to harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence for social good. His most recent endeavor is the launch of an Artificial Intelligence Media Platform, Marktechpost, which stands out for its in-depth coverage of machine learning and deep learning news that is both technically sound and easily understandable by a wide audience. The platform boasts of over 2 million monthly views, illustrating its popularity among audiences. [Download] Evaluation of Large Language Model Vulnerabilities Report (Promoted)