An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: JPMorgan Chase is summoning all staff back to the office, becoming the latest corporate giant to call time on era of remote and hybrid working sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic. The US's largest bank, which has some 316,000 employees worldwide, announced on Friday that all workers on hybrid work schedules will be required to return to the office five days a week from March. [...] Few top executives have been more vocal in making the case for working from the office than Jamie Dimon, the veteran CEO of JPMorgan, who -- as early as 2021 -- sought to restore pre-pandemic working habits. "And everyone is going to be happy with it," he told a Wall Street Journal event that year. "And yes, the commute -- you know, people don't like commuting. But so what?"

Even before Friday's announcement, more than half of employees at JPMorgan had already been required to work from the office full-time. In an internal memo to staff, seen by the Guardian, Dimon and other executives acknowledged that "some of you prefer a hybrid schedule" and said they "respectfully understand that not everyone will agree with this decision." "We are now a few years out of the pandemic and have had the time to evaluate the benefits and challenges of remote and hybrid working," they wrote. "We feel that now is the right time to solidify our full-time in-office approach. "We think it is the best way to run the company. As we've discussed before, the benefits of working together in person are substantial and irreplaceable, and as we spend more time together, the more advantages we gain."

"Nvidia has officially introduced its highly anticipated GeForce 50 Series graphics cards, accompanied by the debut of DLSS 4 technology," writes Slashdot reader jjslash. "The lineup includes four premium GPUs: the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 are slated for release on January 30, with the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti following in February. TechSpot recount of the Jensen Huang keynote tries to differentiate between dubious performance claims and actual expected raw output": The new RTX 5090 flagship comes packing significantly more hardware over its predecessor. Not only does this GPU use Nvidia's new Blackwell architecture, but it also packs significantly more CUDA cores, greater memory bandwidth, and a higher VRAM capacity. The SM count has increased from 128 with the RTX 4090 to a whopping 170 with the RTX 5090 -- a 33% increase in the core size. The memory subsystem is overhauled, now featuring GDDR7 technology on a massive 512-bit bus. With this GDDR7 memory clocked at 28 Gbps, memory bandwidth reaches 1,792 GB/s -- a near 80% increase over the RTX 4090's bandwidth. It also includes 32GB of VRAM, the most Nvidia has ever provided on a consumer GPU. [...]

As for the performance claims... Nvidia has - as usual - used its marketing to obscure actual gaming performance. RTX 50 GPUs support DLSS 4 multi-frame generation, which previous-generation GPUs lack. This means RTX 50 series GPUs can generate double the frames of previous-gen models in DLSS-supported games, making them appear up to twice as "fast" as RTX 40 series GPUs. But in reality, while FPS numbers will increase with DLSS 4, latency and gameplay feel may not improve as dramatically. [...] The claim that the RTX 5070 matches the RTX 4090 in performance seems dubious. Perhaps it could match in frame rate with DLSS 4, but certainly not in raw, non-DLSS performance. Based on Nvidia's charts, the RTX 5070 seems 20-30% faster than the RTX 4070 at 1440p. This would place the RTX 5070 slightly ahead of the RTX 4070 Super for about $50 less, or alternatively, 20-30% faster than the RTX 4070 for the same price. These GeForce 50 series wasn't the only announcement Nvidia made at CES 2025. The chipmaker unveiled a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer, capable of running sophisticated AI models with up to 200 billion parameters. It also announced plans to introduce AI-powered autonomous characters in video games this year, starting with a virtual teammate in the battle royale game PUBG.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After ditching the traditional Dell XPS laptop look in favor of the polarizing design of the XPS 13 Plus released in 2022, Dell is killing the XPS branding that has become a mainstay for people seeking a sleek, respectable, well-priced PC. This means that there won't be any more Dell XPS clamshell ultralight laptops, 2-in-1 laptops, or desktops. Dell is also killing its Latitude, Inspiron, and Precision branding, it announced today. Moving forward, Dell computers will have either just Dell branding, which Dell's announcement today described as "designed for play, school, and work," Dell Pro branding "for professional-grade productivity," or be Dell Pro Max products, which are "designed for maximum performance." Dell will release Dell and Dell Pro-branded displays, accessories, and "services," it said. The Pro Max line will feature laptops and desktop workstations with professional-grade GPU capabilities as well as a new thermal design.

Dell claims its mid-tier Pro line emphasizes durability, "withstanding three times as many hinge cycles, drops, and bumps from regular use as competitor devices." The statement is based on "internal analysis of multiple durability tests performed" on the Dell Pro 14 Plus (released today) and HP EliteBook 640 G11 laptops conducted in November. Also based on internal testing conducted in November, Dell claims its Pro PCs boost "airflow by 20 percent, making these Dell's quietest commercial laptops ever." Within each line are base models, Plus models, and Premium models. In a blog post, Kevin Terwilliger, VP and GM of commercial, consumer, and gaming PCs at Dell, explained that Plus models offer "the most scalable performance" and Premium models offer "the ultimate in mobility and design." By those naming conventions, old-time Dell users could roughly equate XPS laptops with new Dell Premium products. [...] Dell will maintain its Alienware line of gaming PCs and peripherals (Dell acquired Alienware in 2006). The changes were made to create more "unified branding" that will make it "easier and faster to find the right PCs, accessories, and services," said Dell in a press release. It also serves to push the company's "AI PCs" onto consumers.

Dell notes that it will maintain its Alienware line of gaming PCs and peripherals "that's been service PC gamers for nearly 30 years."

Developer/data journalist Josh Renaud is also long-time Slashdot reader Kirkman14 — and he's got a story to tell: How do you get people interested in an obscure Atari ST graphics format used on BBSes in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Recruit some folks to help you make an artpack full of images and animations showing it off! That's the idea behind IGNITE, a new artpack from Mistigris computer arts and Break Into Chat, featuring 18 images and animations created in "Instant Graphics and Sound" format.

I love telling unknown underdog computer stories, and IGS sucked me in. This fall, I published a six-part, 14,000-word history, introducing readers to a cast of characters that included Mears, the self-described "working man without a degree" who often downplayed his own coding ability; Kevin Moody and Anthony Rau, two Navy guys in Florida who bonded over their love of Atari and BBSing; Steve Turnbull, an artist and scenic designer working in Hollywood; and many others.

But IGS isn't just a thing of the past. Two years ago, on New Years Eve 2022, Mears made a surprise announcement — he was releasing a new version of IGS, thirty years after he had stopped working on the project.

Because I (inadvertently) had spurred Larry to action, I felt an obligation to make some art using his new tools. I completed my first piece — a drawing of a ship from the sci-fi game FTL — in early 2023. Over the subsequent months, I kept at it, and ended up creating a number of fun animations. I'm particularly proud of the [Star Trek-themed] animated Guardian of Forever login sequence, and a brand-new Calvin and Hobbes-themed animation I created just for this pack.

I had long wanted to release an all-IGS artpack as a way to honor Mears, highlight IGS, and maybe stir other people's interest in trying this format. To lower the barrier to entry, I created my own web-based drawing tool, JoshDraw, which supports a small subset of IGS's features. To my surprise, I successfully recruited seven other people to submit nine static images to include in the pack.

Remember that massive botnet run by Chinese government hackers? Flax Typhoon "compromised computer networks in North America, Europe, Africa, and across Asia, with a particular focus on Taiwan," according to the U.S. Treasury Department. (The group's botnet breaching this autumn affected "at least 260,000 internet-connected devices," reports the Washington Post, "roughly half of which were located in the United States.")

Friday America's Treasury Department sanctioned "a Beijing-based cybersecurity company for its role in multiple computer intrusion incidents against U.S. victims..." according to an announcement from the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. "Between summer 2022 and fall 2023, Flax Typhoon actors used infrastructure tied to Integrity Tech during their computer network exploitation activities against multiple victims. During that time, Flax Typhoon routinely sent and received information from Integrity Tech infrastructure."

From the Washington Post: The group behind the attacks was active since at least 2021, but U.S. authorities only managed to wrest control of the devices from the hackers in September, after the FBI won a court order that allowed the agency to send commands to the infected devices...

Treasury's designation follows sanctions announced last month on Sichuan Silence Information Technology Company, in which U.S. officials accused the company of exploiting technology flaws to install malware in more than 80,000 firewalls, including those protecting U.S. critical infrastructure. The new sanctions on Beijing Integrity Technology are notable due to the company's public profile and outsize role in servicing China's police and intelligence services via state-run hacking competitions. The company, which is listed in Shanghai and has a market capitalization of more than $327 million, plays a central role in providing state agencies "cyber ranges" — technology that allows them to simulate cyberattacks and defenses...

In September, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said the Flax Typhoon attack successfully infiltrated universities, media organizations, corporations and government agencies, and in some cases caused significant financial losses as groups raced to replace the infected hardware. He said at the time that the operation to shut down the network was "one round in a much longer fight...." A 2024 assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said China is the most "active and persistent" cyberthreat and that actors under Beijing's direction have made efforts to breach U.S. critical infrastructure with the intention of lying in wait to be able to launch attacks in the event of major conflict.
"The Treasury sanctions bar Beijing Integrity Technology from access to U.S. financial systems and freeze any assets the company might hold in the United States," according to the article, "but the moves are unlikely to have a significant effect on the company," (according to Dakota Cary, a fellow at the Atlantic Council who has studied the company's role in state-sponsored hacking).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China's commerce ministry has proposed export restrictions on some technology used to make battery components and process critical minerals lithium and gallium, a document, opens new tab issued on Thursday showed. If implemented, they would be the latest in a series of export restrictions and bans targeting critical minerals and the technology used to process them, areas in which Beijing is globally dominant. Their announcement precedes the inauguration later this month of Donald Trump for a second term during which he is expected to use tariffs and various trade restrictions against other countries, in particular China. [...]

The proposed expansion and revisions of restrictions on technology used to extract and process lithium or prepare battery components could also hinder the overseas expansion plans of major Chinese battery makers, including CATL, Gotion, and EVE Energy. Some technologies to extract gallium would also be restricted. Thursday's announcement does not say when the proposed changes, which are open for public comment until Feb. 1, could come into force. Adam Webb, head of battery raw materials at consultancy Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, notes that China retains a 70% grip on the global processing of lithium into the material needed to make EV batteries. "These proposed measures would be a move to maintain this high market share and to secure lithium chemical production for China's domestic battery supply chains," he said. "Depending on the level of export restrictions imposed, this could pose challenges for Western lithium producers hoping to use Chinese technology to produce lithium chemicals."

Samsung is set to debut its new Odyssey 3D monitor at CES 2025, reviving the glasses-free 3D experience that manufacturers pushed on consumers over a decade ago. While details remain limited, the monitor reportedly utilizes a lenticular lens, stereo cameras, and AI to convert 2D content into lifelike 3D visuals, with a focus on appealing to gamers for broader adoption. Ars Technica reports: According to the South Korean company's announcement, the monitor's use of a lenticular lens that is "attached to the front of the panel and its front stereo camera" means that you don't have to wear glasses to access the monitor's "customizable 3D experience." Lenticular lenses direct different images to each eye to make images look three-dimensional. This is a notable advancement from the first 3D monitor that Samsung released in 2009. That display used Nvidia software and Nvidia shutter glasses to allow users to toggle between a 2D view and a 3D view through a few button presses and supported content.

Another advancement is the Odyssey 3D's claimed ability to use artificial intelligence "to analyze and convert 2D video into 3D." We've recently seen similar technology from brands like Acer, which announced portable monitors in 2022 and then announced laptops that could convert 2D content into stereoscopic 3D in 2023. Those displays also relied on AI, as well as a specialized optical lens and a pair of eye-tracking cameras, to create the effect. But unlike Acer's portable monitors, Samsung claims that its monitor can make 2D content look like 3D even if that content doesn't officially support 3D. [...] Interestingly, Samsung's announcement today only mentioned the release of a 27-inch, 4K resolution 3D monitor, despite Samsung teasing a 37-inch version in August. It's possible that the larger version didn't work as well and/or that demand for the larger size would be too small, considering the high price and limited demand implications of a glasses-free 3D monitor aimed at gamers. Further reading: Samsung, Asus, MSI Unveil First 27-inch 4K OLED 240Hz Gaming Monitors

After a four-year hiatus, 2025 will see the return of the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Started in 1984 (and inspired partly by a bug in the classic Bourne shell), it's "the Internet's oldest contest," acording to their official social media account on Mastodon.

The contest enters its "pending" state today at 2024-12-29 23:58 UTC — meaning an opening date for submissions has been officially scheduled (for January 31st) as well as a closing date roughly eight weeks later on April 1st, 2025. That's according to the newly-released (proposed and tentative) rules and guidelines, listing contest goals like "show the importance of programming style, in an ironic way" and "stress C compilers with unusual code." And the contest's home page adds an additional goal: "to have fun with C!"

Excerpts from the official rules: Rule 0
Just as C starts at 0, so the IOCCC starts at rule 0. :-)

Rule 1
Your submission must be a complete program....

Rule 5
Your submission MUST not modify the content or filename of any part of your original submission including, but not limited to prog.c, the Makefile (that we create from your how to build instructions), as well as any data files you submit....

Rule 6
I am not a rule, I am a free(void *human);
while (!(ioccc(rule(you(are(number(6)))))) {
ha_ha_ha();
}

Rule 6 is clearly a reference to The Prisoner... (Some other rules are even sillier...) And the guidelines include their own jokes: You are in a maze of twisty guidelines, all different.

There are at least zero judges who think that Fideism has little or nothing to do with the IOCCC judging process....

We suggest that you avoid trying for the 'smallest self-replicating' source. The smallest, a zero byte entry, won in 1994.
And this weekend there was also a second announcement: After a 4 year effort by a number of people, with over 6168+ commits, the Great Fork Merge has been completed and the Official IOCCC web site has been updated! A significant number of improvements has been made to the IOCCC winning entries. A number of fixes and improvements involve the ability of reasonable modern Unix/Linux systems to be able to compile and even run them.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader — and C programmer — achowe for sharing the news.

On Christmas Day, the social media app Bluesky added a list of Trending topics to its mobile app, allowing users to see which subjects are popular among its community. The Verge reports: The new feature can be found by selecting the search icon (the magnifying glass), which appears at the bottom of the screen on the mobile app and on the left sidebar on the web. Lists of Trending and Recommended subjects now appear below the search bar. Tap on any topic, and you will be able to access the associated posts. [...] According to the announcement, the new feature is "V1" (it is marked as a Beta on the app) and "we will be iterating with your feedback."

El Salvador secured a $1.4 billion loan deal with the IMF after agreeing to scale back its bitcoin policies, making cryptocurrency acceptance voluntary for businesses and limiting public sector involvement. The deal aims to stabilize the country's economy, with bitcoin's recent rally boosting the value of El Salvador's holdings. The BBC reports: In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender. This week, the cryptocurrency briefly hit a fresh record high of more than $108,000.

"The potential risks of the Bitcoin project will be diminished significantly in line with Fund policies," the IMF announcement said. "Legal reforms will make acceptance of Bitcoin by the private sector voluntary. For the public sector, engagement in Bitcoin-related economic activities and transactions in and purchases of Bitcoin will be confined." Last Friday, El Salvdaor purchased more than 11 BTC worth $1.07 million and executed another 11 BTC purchase on Sunday, according to crypto data platform Arkham. El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, is ramping up buys "with an interim goal of acquiring 20,000 more Bitcoin," reports the Daily Hodl.

A consortium of investors has resurrected Lilium just days after the electric air taxi startup ceased operations and laid off about 1,000 employees. From a report: Mobile Uplift Corporation, a company set up by investors from Europe and North America, has agreed to acquire the operating assets of the startup's two subsidiaries, Lilium GmbH and Lilium eAircraft GmbH, per an announcement Tuesday.

The parent company, Lilium N.V, will not receive any funds in accordance with German insolvency law. Terms of the deal, which are expected to close in January, were not disclosed. Consultancy giant KPMG handled the sale process for Lilium. Mobile Uplift Corporation said in the announcement it intends to rehire workers who were laid off immediately after opening of the proceedings and closing of the transaction. It isn't clear if all 1,000 workers will be rehired.

Berlin-based T2 Linux developer René Rebe is also long-time Slashdot reader ReneR — and popped by with a special announcement for the holidays: The T2 Linux team has unveiled T2 Linux SDE 24.12, codenamed "Sky's the Limit!", delivering a massive update for this highly portable source-based Linux distribution... With 3,280 package updates, 206 new features, and the ability to boot on systems with as little as 512MB RAM, this release further strengthens T2 Linux's position as the ultimate tool for developers working across diverse hardware and embedded systems.
Some highlights from Rene's announcement:

• "The release includes 37 pre-compiled ISOs with Glibc, Musl, and uClibc, supporting 25 CPU architectures like ARM(64), RISCV(64), Loongarch64, SPARC(64), and vintage retro computing platforms such as M68k, Alpha, and even initial Nintendo Wii U support added."

• " The Cosmic Desktop, a modern Rust-based environment, debuts alongside expanded application support for non-mainstream RISC architectures, now featuring LibreOffice, OpenJDK, and QEMU."

And T2sde.org gives this glimpse of the future:

"While initially created for the Linux kernel, T2 already has proof-of-concept support for building 'home-brew' pkg for Other OS, including: BSDs, macOS and Haiku. Work on alternative micro kernels, such as L4, Fuchsia, RedoxOS or integrating building 'AOSP' Android is being worked on as well."

An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch: Microsoft-owned GitHub announced on Wednesday a free version of its popular Copilot code completion/AI pair programming tool, which will also now ship by default with Microsoft's popular VS Code editor. Until now, most developers had to pay a monthly fee, starting at $10 per month, with only verified students, teachers, and open source maintainers getting free access...

There are some limitations to the free version, which is geared toward occasional users, not major work on a big project. Developers on the free plan will get access to 2,000 code completions per month, for example, and as a GitHub spokesperson told me, each Copilot code suggestion will count against this limit — not just accepted suggestions. And while GitHub recently added the ability to switch between different foundation models, users on the free plan are limited to Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet and OpenAI's GPT-4o. (The paid plans also include Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro and OpenAI's o1-preview and -mini.) For Copilot Chat, the number of chat messages is limited to 50, but otherwise, there aren't any major limitations to the free service. Developers still get access to all Copilot Extensions and skills.

The free Copilot SKU will work in a number of editors, including VS Code, Visual Studio, and JetBrains, as well as on GitHub.com.
GitHub's announcement ends with the words "Happy coding!" and calls the service "GitHub Copilot Free." But TechCrunch points out there's already competition from services like Amazon Q Developer, as well as from companies like Tabnine and Qodo (previously known as Codium) — and they typically offer a free tier. But in addition, "With Copilot Free, we are returning to our freemium roots," GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke told TechCrunch, as well as "laying the groundwork for something far greater: AI represents our best path to enabling a GitHub with one billion developers.

"There should be no barrier to entry for experiencing the joy of creating software. Now six years after being acquired by Microsoft, it indeed appears GitHub is still GitHub — and we are doing our thing."

Or, as GitHub CEO Satya Nadella said in a video posted on LinkedIn, "The joy of coding is back! And we are looking forward to bringing the same experience to so many more people around the world."

OpenAI has unveiled a new AI model that it says takes longer to solve problems but gets better results, following Google's similar announcement a day earlier. The model, called o3, replaces o1 from September and spends extra time working through questions that need step-by-step reasoning.

It scores three times higher than o1 on ARC-AGI, a test measuring how well AI handles complex math and logic problems it hasn't seen before. "This is the beginning of the next phase of AI," CEO Sam Altman said during a livestream Friday.

The Microsoft-backed startup is keeping o3 under wraps for now but plans to let outside researchers test it.

Longtime Slashdot reader timeOday shares a report from CNN: If all goes to plan, Virginia will be the site of the world's first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant, able to harness this futuristic clean power and generate electricity from it by the early 2030s, according to an announcement Tuesday by the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems. CFS, one of the largest and most-hyped nuclear fusion companies, will make a multibillion-dollar investment into building the facility near Richmond. When operational, the plant will be able to plug into the grid and produce 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150,000 homes, said its CEO Bob Mumgaard.

"This will mark the first time fusion power will be made available in the world at grid scale," Mumgaard said. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin welcomed the announcement, calling it "an historic moment for Virginia and the world at large." The plant would represent a new stage in the quest to commercialize nuclear fusion, the process which powers the stars. But the path toward it is unlikely to be smooth, not least because the technology has not yet been proved viable.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son will announce a $100 billion investment in the U.S. over the next four years during a Monday visit to President-elect Donald Trump's residence Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC's Sara Eisen.

The billionaire investor and founder of the Japanese tech-investing firm will also promise in the joint announcement with Trump to create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence and related infrastructure, the sources said. The money will be deployed before the end of Trump's term. The funding could come from various sources controlled by Softbank, including the Vision Fund, capital projects or chipmaker Arm Holdings, where the firm is majority owner.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Computerworld: Microsoft has announced Phi-4 — a new AI model with 14 billion parameters — designed for complex reasoning tasks, including mathematics. Phi-4 excels in areas such as STEM question-answering and advanced problem-solving, surpassing similar models in performance. Phi-4, part of the Phi small language models (SLMs), is currently available on Azure AI Foundry under the Microsoft Research License Agreement and will launch on Hugging Face [this] week, the company said in a blog post.

The company emphasized that Phi-4's design focuses on improving accuracy through enhanced training and data curation.... "Phi-4 outperforms comparable and even larger models on tasks like mathematical reasoning, thanks to a training process that combines synthetic datasets, curated organic data, and innovative post-training techniques," Microsoft said in its announcement. The model leverages a new training approach that integrates multi-agent prompting workflows and data-driven innovations to enhance its reasoning efficiency. The accompanying report highlights that Phi-4 balances size and performance, challenging the industry norm of prioritizing larger models... Phi-4 achieved a score of 80.4 on the MATH benchmark and has surpassed other systems in problem-solving and reasoning evaluations, according to the technical report accompanying the release. This makes it particularly appealing for domain-specific applications requiring precision, like scientific computation or advanced STEM problem-solving.

Microsoft emphasized its commitment to ethical AI development, integrating advanced safety measures into Phi-4. The model benefits from Azure AI Content Safety features such as prompt shields, protected material detection, and real-time application monitoring. These features, Microsoft explained, help users address risks like adversarial prompts and data security threats during AI deployment. The company also reiterated that Azure AI Foundry, the platform hosting Phi-4, offers tools to measure and mitigate AI risks. Developers using the platform can evaluate and improve their models through built-in metrics and custom safety evaluations, Microsoft added... With Phi-4, Microsoft continues to evolve its AI offerings while promoting responsible use through robust safeguards. Industry watchers will observe how this approach shapes adoption in critical fields where reasoning and security are paramount.

Witcher 4's first trailer debuted at the 2024 Game Awards — a six-minute cinema-quality thriller. It's a teaser for a game that "aims to be the most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game to date," according to an announcement from CD Projekt Red. The trailer is pre-rendered in a custom build of Unreal Engine 5 on an unannounced NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU. Powered by the same tech that The Witcher IV is built on, using assets and models from the game itself, it aims to provide players with a cinematic look at the kind of experience the game is aspiring to provide.
The trailer shows "a remote village that has been terrorized for generations by a fearsome monster demanding human sacrifices..." their announcement notes. ("At the heart of the trailer is Ciri's perspective as an outsider to the village.") "Geralt will appear in the game, but we don't want to spoil his role precisely," CD Projekt Red told IGN.

Kotaku reminds fans there's also Netflix's animated movie The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep in February 2025 — plus the first new Witcher novel in over a decade (with an English translation) expected sometime next year as well...

Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

HDMI Forum will announce new specifications with increased bandwidth capabilities at CES 2025, ahead of anticipated graphics card launches from AMD and NVIDIA. The announcement, scheduled for January 6, is expected to introduce HDMI 2.2 standard alongside a new cable supporting higher resolutions and refresh rates.

Current HDMI 2.1 specification maxes out at 48 Gbps bandwidth, allowing 10K resolution at 120 Hz with compression. The upgrade aims to compete with DisplayPort 2.1, which offers up to 80 Gbps bandwidth and is already supported by recent AMD and Intel GPUs.

In an announcement that stunned New Zealand's research community, the country's center-right coalition government said it would divert half of the NZ$75 million Marsden Fund, the nation's sole funding source for fundamental science, to "research with economic benefits." From a report: Moreover, the fund would no longer support any social sciences and humanities research, and the expert panels considering these proposals would be disbanded.

Universities New Zealand, which represents the nation's eight universities, called the planned disinvestment in social science and humanities "astonishing." It was among several academic groups and many scientists calling for the government to reverse the unexpected decision.

In announcing the change, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins said the fund should focus on "core science" that supports economic growth and "a science sector that drives high-tech, high-productivity, high-value businesses and jobs."