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Over the past 24 hours, more user reports claiming connectivity issues on Pixel phones have surfaced.

This has become a regular occurrence, with new reports cropping up periodically, typically around updates.

Google recommends resetting connectivity settings on affected devices.

Pixel phones are having connectivity problems again. Over the last 24 hours or so, several users have taken to Reddit to say their phones are failing to connect in the internet in various ways.

It’s not clear how or if these issues are actually related. We’ve clocked three separate posts about connectivity problems from the past day: a Pixel 10 user who says their phone keeps flip-flopping between Wi-Fi and mobile data; another who says they keep losing mobile data; and a 7a owner who was able to resolve their issue by resetting connectivity settings.

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What a journey! Jamir Nazir, one of the three finalists for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize who were accused of using AI to create their work, has won the overall prize .

ICYMI:

Accusations began swirling online in May shortly after the Commonwealth Foundation announced the five regional winners who would go on to compete for the overall prize.

Readers, writers , and even an AI expert pointed to what they believed were “obvious markers of AI writing” in the nominated stories.

Citing concerns about “editorial integrity,” Granta Magazine, which has published the winning stories for more than a decade, ended its partnership with the Prize.

But! The Commonwealth Foundation cleared Nazir and his fellow finalists last week after a month-long investigation that, notably, did not incorporate AI-detection software.

Nazir, who has not commented on the allegations, discusses his inspiration and writing process in a short film released by the Commonwealth Foundation.

It’s just about impossible to prove a negative where AI is concerned.

The linguistic tics like em dashes and “not X, but Y” constructions that can indicate a work was AI-generated have their origins in the human-generated works large language models were trained on.

Showing your work with notes, drafts, and other documentation is about to become important for writers and could figure into future award selection processes.

See for yourself. You can read Nazir’s winning story, “The Serpent in the Grove,” along with the other regional winners, at Granta.

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SpaceX is offering half-price Starlink for some users in Memphis

Reisdents near an xAI data center are eligible for the offer

The company is being sued for pollution caused by its infrastructure

Here's one way to try and overcome local opposition to your energy-hungry, water-sucking, AI-feeding data centers: offer residents some sweeteners in return for having the infrastructure built in their backyard.

As Bloomberg reports, SpaceX is now giving out half-price Starlink subscriptions to those around the Memphis, Tennessee area, where the company operates existing Colossus data centers and "continues to invest in the Memphis area".

There will be no upfront hardware costs for new customers, and the discounts can be shared with "nearby" friends and family through a referral. However, if you change address and move out of the area, you lose your discount.

While 'appeasing local residents' isn't explicitly mentioned in the SpaceX statement , it doesn't take much reading between the lines. If you live around Memphis or neighboring Southaven, you can see if your address is in an eligible part of the area by looking up the location online .

Pollution problems

He's trying to gain favor but I doubt there's even enough users here for this to work. from r/Starlink

The data centers in this region are primarily for SpaceX subsidiary xAI, and the company is currently being sued for violating the Clean Air Act: it's claimed that the methane gas turbines powering the Colossus data centers don't have the required permissions.

"As we shared since xAI started operating in Memphis, our homes, churches, and playgrounds will not be sacrifice zones for Big Tech’s convenience," says Abre’ Conner, a director at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

It remains to be seen whether half-price internet changes the mood of those affected: the discount might also be known "as the please don't stop us from running illegal natural gas turbines discount" quips one user on Reddit ,

Discounted Starlink packages aren't the only commitment xAI is making though. The company has also said it will resume work on a waste water recycling plant from next year , which will provide clean water for the data centers and local authorities, though it isn't clear why work was halted to begin with.

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Categorically, I cannot afford to buy my own Steam Machine . Much to my chagrin, the most basic 512 GB model still costs $1,049 . Even Valve's own engineers wish their game box was cheaper . Thankfully, a French retailer is stepping in to try and do what even Valve could not: offer a compact PC for very slightly less than a grand.

LDLC has unveiled its own compact gaming PC, even going as far as to initially dub it the 'Stim Machine.' The retailer has since dropped this name in favour of the less ire-tempting ' LDLC PC box ' (via VideoCardz ). Though no longer available to buy, the 500 GB model used standard PC components and went for €1,000 as a kit you would need to assemble yourself.

A pre-built model was also briefly available. This went for €1,040, a price point directly comparable to how much the Steam Machine is selling for in Europe. The compact desktop even came with a tutorial on how to install SteamOS, though obviously that's not a hoop you would have to jump through to get the Steam Machine up and running.

So, what was the 'Stim Machine' offering beyond a potentially sub-1,000 euro price tag with some assembly required? For a start, the specs sheet includes a more recent RDNA 4 GPU in the cheap and (mostly) cheerful AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT. This GPU has a few extra compute units (and a much newer architecture) compared to the Steam Machine's semi-custom RDNA 3 card.

The LDLC PC Box has a Ryzen 5 8400F processor, whereas Valve's offering enjoys a similar, semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T chip. So far, so comparable. Thanks to its standard Mini-ITX motherboard, the LDLC PC Box also has 16 GB of upgradeable DDR5 memory, as well as 500 GB of NVMe storage with two additional SATA slots on top. The Steam Machine also features a single 512 GB internal SSD, plus a MicroSD slot.

While achieving such comparable specs for less than a grand is impressive, that's still a whole lot of Euros for a relatively low amount of gaming horsepower ( thanks, memory supply crisis ). In other words, even if LDLC's PC Box was still available to buy and I was based in France, it's still a little rich for my blood. Ah well, I'll just hit repeat on Daft Punk's 2005 banger —that's almost just as good, right?