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Regular YouTube users have likely noticed an abundance of AI-generated fake movie trailers this past year or so. This annoying AI slop is all over the platform. As it turns out, major movie studios have actually been making money from the videos, according to reporting by Deadline. The scheme worked sort of like a mob shakedown. Hollywood studios would not enforce copyright on these videos. Instead, they struck a deal with YouTube to ensure they got the ad revenue instead of the people that typed in a couple of prompts and did some light editing. One of the most famous of these videos is a bogus trailer for the upcoming Superman reboot. This one actually tricked French national television, leading director James Gunn to post three puking emojis on X. He likely didnt know that Warner Bros. Discovery was one of the companies racking up cash for these pale imitations. https://t.co/O17n3VuSx0 James Gunn (@JamesGunn) October 20, 2024 Theres a question here as to why major film studios would allow their brands to be diluted by AI-generated nonsense. After all, these fake trailers exist right next to the actual teasers and its been proven that they can confuse people. We dont have any actual monetary figures, but the videos have racked up billions of views. Maybe thats enough for short-sighted companies. The actors union SAG-AFTRA has called the whole thing a "race to the bottom." In any event, the gravy train has run out of steam. YouTube has turned off ad revenue for these kinds of videos, which was likely done because of Deadlines reporting. Popular channels that distribute this content, like Screen Culture, have been removed from the partner program. Now nobody will make money from a slightly-off Leonardo DiCaprio making his way through a season of Squid Game. The channels can appeal YouTubes decision. The founder of a channel called KH Studio, which has amassed hundreds of millions of views, has said that they never intended to mislead viewers. They just wanted to create "what if" scenarios. "Ive been running KH Studio full-time for over three years now, putting everything into it. Its tough to see it grouped under 'misleading content' in the demonetization decision, when my goal has always been to explore creative possibilities not to misrepresent real releases," they added. We contacted Screen Culture for comment and will update this post if we hear back. That channel has over 1.4 million subscribers and has posted a whopping 1,800 videos. If something exists, Screen Culture has likely made a fake trailer for it. For instance, the channel has posted over 20 AI-generated trailers for the upcoming Marvel film Fantastic Four: First Steps.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/movie-studios-have-been-making-serious-money-from-ai-slop-on-youtube-160434252.html?src=rss
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There may come a point where you want to break ties with Amazon maybe youre cutting down on impulse buys, trying to escape the subscription rabbit hole or just rethinking where your money goes. Whatever the reason, Amazon gives you two main options: you can cancel your Prime membership to stop the monthly (or yearly) payments, or you can go all in and delete your entire Amazon account including your order history, personal data and access to services like Kindle and Prime Video. This guide will walk you through both processes step by step so you can take control of your Amazon presence. How to cancel your Amazon Prime membership Canceling Amazon Prime is a lot easier than you might think especially if youre looking to save money or youre not using the perks much anymore. Prime comes with benefits like free shipping, access to Prime Video, Prime Reading and more, but if youre not using those, you may want to let it go. Go to Amazons End Your Amazon Prime Membership help page, or sign into your Amazon account and select Account & Lists then Prime Membership. Select End Membership. Amazon may prompt you with offers to stay (like reminders of what you'll lose or a discounted rate). If you're sure, keep clicking Continue to Cancel. Confirm your cancellation. Once canceled, your membership will run until the end of your current billing period. If you cancel during a free trial, your Prime benefits will end immediately and you wont be charged. How to delete your Amazon account entirely If you want to take things a step further and permanently delete your Amazon account along with all your personal data, order history and any associated services you can request full account closure. While this will irreversibly delete account details like your order history, you can always sign up again from scratch if you change your mind. Once your account is gone, you wont be able to access anything tied to it again. This includes your: Order history and invoices Access to digital content (like Kindle books, Prime Video purchases or Amazon Music) Saved payment methods and shipping addresses Amazon Photos, Amazon Drive and Alexa voice history Any remaining Amazon gift card balances or promotional credit So, before you go through with it, make sure you download anything you want to keep, spend any remaining credit and cancel open orders or subscriptions. Head to the Close Your Amazon Account help page, or sign into your Amazon account and select Account & Lists then Account, and navigate to the Manage your data section then Close Your Amazon Account. Review the list of services associated with your account. This helps you see what you'll lose access to, such as Audible, Alexa devices, Kindle purchases or Amazon-owned services in other countries. If you're sure you want to continue, select a reason for leaving from the drop-down menu. Check the box confirming: Yes, I want to permanently close my Amazon account and delete my data. Click Close My Account. Georgie Peru for Engadget After submitting the request, Amazon will send a confirmation message to your email or phone number. Youll need to reply within five days to verify the deletion request. If you dont, the request expires and your account stays active. If you have multiple Amazon accounts, youll need to go through this process for each one individually. Once your account is deleted, you cant get it back. If you want to use Amazon again in the future, youll have to create a brand-new account. Also, your account will be deleted across all Amazon sites globally so if you also use amazon.co.uk, amazon.de or amazon.co.jp with the same login, those will be gone too. FAQs Can you get a refund on your Prime membership? Yes, in some cases. If you havent used any Prime benefits during the current period for example, if you havent placed an order with free Prime shipping or streamed anything on Prime Video Amazon will typically give you a full refund. It usually takes three to five business days to process. What happens to your Prime add-ons? If youve signed up for Prime Video Channels like Paramount+ or Showtime, those will also end when you cancel your Prime membership. These subscriptions wont renew once Prime is canceled. Also, if you subscribed to Prime through Google Play on an Android device, you'll need to cancel through Google Subscriptions instead. Similarly, if your Prime came bundled with a third-party service like Metro by T-Mobile, youll need to contact that provider directly to cancel. For more general tips on managing and canceling subscriptions youre no longer using, check out our guide to finding and cancelig unused subscriptions. What if you cant log in to your account? If youre having trouble accessing the account you want to close, Amazon has a help page that walks you through password recovery, identity verification and other troubleshooting steps. And if you're helping someone else delete their account for example, if you're an authorized agent Amazon recommends contacting it via email with legal proof of authorization under your state's privacy laws.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/how-to-cancel-your-amazon-account-160046999.html?src=rss
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How can we push CPUs forward? That's the question the computing industry has been asking since the Intel 4004 processor launched in 1971. Chipmakers have tried cranking up clock speeds, adding multiple cores and miniaturizing chip architectures to make them faster and more efficient. The conflict between RISC and CISC chip instruction sets (ISAs) "reduced" designs versus "complex" ones rages on to this day with RISC-V. For the past few years, AMD has been exploring a unique approach to speeding up some of its processors with 3D V-Cache, a technology that stacks more L3 cache on top of Ryzen cores. By doing so, the company avoids crowding the 2D plane of its chips, and it's able to cram in more memory without making its CPUs larger. With the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, AMD has now evolved 3D V-Cache to the point where every hardcore gamer will want one even if few people actually need a $700 CPU. 3D V-Cache first appeared in the Ryzen 5800X3D in 2022, and AMD brought it to laptops in 2023. While there were some obvious downsides initially the 5800X3D had slower clock speeds than the standard Ryzen 5800 AMD has steadily improved the technology. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 9 7900X3D were both notable for reaching the same maximum clock speeds as their 2D counterparts. While AMD's second-generation 3D V-Cache technology isn't as big of a leap in the 9950X3D (and other recent chips like the 9900X3D and 9800X3D), the company has managed to overcome the few compromises it's had to make so far. Simply put, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a beast of a CPU for gaming and productivity work alike. What's new in the Ryzen 9 9950X3D? The 9950X3D is a 16-core processor with a 4.3GHz base clock speed and a boost speed of 5.7GHz, just like its 2D sibling the 9950X. The big difference between the two is in their total L2 and L3 cache: the 9950X has 80MB, while the 3D V-Cache technology crams 144MB in the 9950X3D. By having more cache, the 9950X3D is able to tackle more processing loads without hitting RAM, which could take eight to 10 times as long, according to Robert Hallock, AMD's director of technical marketing. The major upgrade in the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, in addition to being powered by AMD's new Zen 5 cores, lies in the positioning of its 3D V-Cache layer. Previously, it sat on top of Zen 3 and Zen 4 cores, which slightly hindered cooling and overall performance. Now, the 3D V-Cache layer sits below the 9950X3D's Zen 5 cores, which gives those hotter elements direct access to your CPU fans heatsink. The 9950X3D has the same 170 Watt TDP (Thermal Design Profile) as its 2D variant, so cooling shouldn't be a huge problem, and unlike most other 3D V-Cache chips, it's also fully overclockable. Devindra Hardawar for Engadget In-use: An absolute powerhouse I expected the Ryzen 9 9950X3D to wallop every other PC CPU I've tested, but I didn't expect the leap to be so dramatic. In the Geekbench 6 single-threaded CPU benchmark, it was 20 percent faster than the Ryzen 9 7900X I was previously using. The 9950X3D was also 33 percent faster in the same benchmark's multi-threaded test. (I didn't have a 7950X3D for direct comparison, but based on a median of scores from 3DMark users, it hits 14,290 points. The 9950X3D reached 17,025, or 19 percent faster, in my testing) CPU GeekBench 6 CPU 3DMark CPU Profile Cinebench 2024 AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D 3,366/18,950 17,025 Max 134/2,124 AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 2,822/14,216 12,553 Max 113/1,103 Apple M4 Max 4,090/26,394 N/A 190/2066 Apple M2 Ultra 2,776/21,403 N/A N/A I've only seen better scores from Apple's hardware. The M4 chip is slightly faster for single-threaded tasks, while the M4 Max and M2 Ultra chips in the Mac Studio trounce AMD's multi-threaded Geekbench 6 scores. Still, you could build a solid Ryzen 9 system for far less than the Mac Studio M4 Max's $2,000 starting cost, even while accounting for the 9950X3D's $700 price tag. Apple doesn't always come out ahead. In the Cinebench 2024 multi-threaded benchmark, the 9950X3D slightly surpassed the M4 Max chip. That result is also a sign that AMD's flagship chip will be a big help for Windows-based content creators. The 9950X3D and the M4 Max both took 14 seconds to transcode a 4K clip into 1080p, which is the fastest result we've ever seen. The major appeal of the 9950X3D is that it'll also be able to handle demanding games over the next few years without bottlenecking high-end GPUs like NVIDIA's RTX 5080 and 5090. On my system, which is using an RTX 5090 and 64GB of RAM, the 9950X3D reached 195 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 while playing in 1080p with high graphics settings. The Ryzen 9 7900X, on the other hand, hit 166 fps with the same GPU and RAM. You'll see less of an immediate uplift at higher resolutions, where your video card is doing more of the work. Cyberpunk hit 64 fps in 4K without DLSS upscaling on the 9950X3D, while it struggled to reach 56 fps on the 7900X with the same settings. For 4K, in particular, the 9950X3D could be useful for scaling performance for monitors with faster refresh rates. On the 7900X, Dragon Age: The Veilguard ran at a smooth 250 fps in 4K with graphics settings and frame generation cranked up, but with the newer chip I saw 270 fps. If youre running a 4K 240Hz monitor with a less powerful GPU, youll likely have a better shot of edging close to 240 fps thanks to 3D V-Cache. Given all of its power, I was surprised to find that the 9950X3D ran at a relatively cool 81.5 Celsius at 100 percent load. It also idles between 30C and 35C, depending on what youre doing. Those results are pretty impressive for a CPU that can push up to 170 Watts. Devindra Hardawar for Engadget Should you buy the Ryzen 9 9950X3D? Muchlike NVIDIA's $2,000 RTX 5090, I can't easily recommend the $700 Ryzen 9 9950X3D to most people. Most gamers would likely be better off with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which sells for a more reasonable $479. Sure, it has half as many cores, but the majority of titles don't tap into many of those to begin with. There's also the $600 12-core 9900X3D, which could be more useful for people who actually need a healthy amount of CPU cores. You could of course consider AMD's current chips without 3D V-Cache, like the Ryzen 7 9700X, which has an MSRP of $359 but is currently selling for under $300. But if you're already in the market for an expensive video card, it's likely worth paying a bit extra to get more L3 cache. When AMD first debuted the 5800X3D, the company claimed 3D V-Cache alone boosted 1080p performance by 15 percent. As games get more complex and demanding, having more available cache could be even more useful. (And it's also easier to pay more for a better chip now than buying a new one in a few years.) As for Intel, it only has plans to bring its version of the technology, dubbed Local Cache, to next-generation Xeon server chips, according to der8auer and Bens Hardware (via Tom's Hardware). Intel's current high-end desktop chip, the 24-core i9-14900K, is no gaming slouch, but it's saddled with just 36MB of L3 cache. Wrap-up If anything, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is yet another sign that AMD is on a hot streak. After releasing a pair of excellent midrange GPUs, which showed that the company can genuinely go toe-to-toe with NVIDIA, this CPU and its accompanying 3D V-Cache technology is a reminder of how AMD is far ahead of Intel in many ways. And lets not forget that it was also the first x86 chipmaker to include NPUs in laptop and desktop CPUs. While its certainly not the best deal around, if you can afford it, the 9950X3D is the best desktop CPU you can buy today.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d-review-a-no-compromise-cpu-for-demanding-gamers-152452811.html?src=rss
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