 How AI Conquered Poker
Good poker players have always known that they need to maintain a balance between bluffing and playing it straight. Now they can do so perfectly. From a report: One of the earliest and most devoted adopters of what has come to be known as "game theory optimal" poker is Seth Davies's friend and poker mentor, Jason Koon. On the second day of the three-day Super High Roller tournament, I visited Koon at his multimillion-dollar house, located in a gated community inside a larger gated community next
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Amazon Heads To the Mall With Prototype Clothing Store
First, Amazon competed with malls. Now, it's moving inside one. From a report: The online retailing giant said Thursday that it plans to open a clothing store in a Southern California mall later this year. It's the latest foray into brick-and-mortar for Amazon, which already sells more than 10% of all clothes in the U.S. The store, which will sell women's and men's clothing as well as shoes and other accessories, will open at Americana at Brand, a mall in Glendale, California. The entry into mal
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London Mayor Wants Daily Driving Charge of Up To $2.7
London's mayor says he needs to charge drivers a "small" daily fee of up to 2 pound ($2.73) for "all but the cleanest vehicles" to help hit climate change targets. From a report: The road pricing proposal is part of a push by Sadiq Khan to encourage people towards public transport, walking, cycling or electric vehicles. The RAC called the plan "poorly timed" with cleaner vehicles being "too expensive for most people." Longer term, Mr Khan says he needs to bring in a pay-per-mile system. He is al
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Starving Afghans Use Crypto To Sidestep US Sanctions, Failing Banks, and the Taliban
NGOs looking to provide emergency aid to Afghanistan are turning to cryptocurrency. From a report: When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August of last year, Fereshteh Forough feared that the group would close her school in Herat, the country's third-largest city. Code to Inspire, an NGO Forough founded, was teaching computer programming to young Afghan women, and the Taliban oppose secondary education for women. Months later, the picture is much different -- and worse -- from what Forough i
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Google is Building an AR Headset
Meta may be the loudest company building AR and VR hardware. Microsoft has HoloLens. Apple is working on something, too. But don't count out Google. The Verge: The search giant has recently begun ramping up work on an AR headset, internally codenamed Project Iris, that it hopes to ship in 2024, according to two people familiar with the project who requested anonymity to speak without the company's permission. Like forthcoming headsets from Meta and Apple, Google's device uses outward-facing came
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Sony Expects Microsoft To Keep Activision Games Multiplatform
Sony said Thursday that it expected Microsoft to ensure that games from Activision Blizzard are available on non-Microsoft videogame platforms if Microsoft completes its proposed acquisition of Activision. From a report: "We expect that Microsoft will abide by contractual agreements and continue to ensure Activision games are multiplatform," a Sony spokesman said Thursday. Activision supplies some of the most popular games for Sony's PlayStation game console, including the Call of Duty series. A
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Elon Musk's Brain Implant Company Is Inching Toward Human Trials, Report Says
Elon Musk's brain implant company Neuralink is now hiring a clinical trial director, an indication that the company's longstanding goal of implanting chips in human brains is coming closer. Bloomberg: The trial director position would oversee the startup's long-promised human trials of its medical device, according to the listing. Neuralink's brain implant -- which Musk has said already allows monkeys to play video games with their thoughts alone -- is intended to help treat a variety of neurolo
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Bank of Russia Calls for Full Ban on Crypto
Russia must ban cryptocurrencies, the country's central bank said in a report released Thursday. From a report: The report, "Cryptocurrencies: trends, risks, measures," was presented during an online press conference with Elizaveta Danilova, the director of the Bank of Russia's Financial Stability Department. The report says cryptocurrencies are volatile and widely used in illegal activities such as fraud. By offering an outlet for people to take their money out of the national economy, they ris
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Locations and Contact Data on 515,000 Vulnerable People Stolen in Red Cross Data Breach
A cyberattack targeting a contractor working for the International Committee of the Red Cross has spilled confidential data on more than 515,000 "highly vulnerable" people, many of whom have been separated from their families due to conflict, migration and disaster. From a report: The Red Cross did not name the contractor, based in Switzerland, which it uses to store data nor say what led to the security incident, but said that the data comes from at least 60 Red Cross and Red Crescent national
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Google Forms Blockchain Group Under Newly Appointed Executive
Google is forming a group dedicated to the blockchain and related technologies under a newly appointed executive who has spent more than a decade on the company's core business of search advertising. From a report: Shivakumar Venkataraman, an engineering vice president for Alphabet's Google, is now running a unit focused on "blockchain and other next-gen distributed computing and data storage technologies," according to an email viewed by Bloomberg News. The executive will become a "founding lea
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Antimicrobial Resistance Now a Leading Cause of Death Worldwide, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Antimicrobial resistance poses a significant threat to humanity, health leaders have warned, as a study reveals it has become a leading cause of death worldwide and is killing about 3,500 people every day. More than 1.2 million -- and potentially millions more -- died in 2019 as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, according to the most comprehensive estimate to date of the global impact of antimicrobial resistance (
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 CHEAP VERSION OF MERCK COVID PILL TO BE MADE FOR POORER NATIONS
An experimental COVID-19 treatment pill, called molnupiravir and being developed by Merck & Co Inc and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP, is seen in this undated handout photo released by Merck & Co Inc and obtained by Reuters May 17, 2021. Merck & Co Inc/Handout via REUTERSA UN-backed agency has struck a deal with nearly 30 generic drugmakers to make low-cost versions of Merck's COVID-19 pill molnupiravir for poorer countries, expanding access to a drug seen as a weapon to fight the pand
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Red Cross Begs Hackers Not To Leak Data of 'Highly Vulnerable People'
The Red Cross has disclosed that it was the victim of a cyber attack and has asked the hackers who broke into the IT network of one of its contractors not to leak the personal information of more than 515,000 of "highly vulnerable people." The Record reports: The data was stolen from a Red Cross program called Restoring Family Links, which aims to reunite family members separated by conflict, disaster, or migration. "While we don't know who is responsible for this attack, or why they carried it
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Russian c.bank proposes banning cryptocurrencies, crypto mining
Representations of virtual cryptocurrencies are seen in this illustration taken November 28, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File PhotoRussia's central bank on Thursday proposed banning the use and mining of cryptocurrencies on Russian territory, citing threats to financial stability, citizens' wellbeing and its monetary policy sovereignty.The move is the latest in a global cryptocurrency crackdown as governments from Asia to the United States worry that privately operated highly vola
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Something In Your Eyes May Reveal If You're At Risk of Early Death, Study Shows
A quick and pain-free scan of the human eyeball could one day help doctors identify "fast agers," who are at greater risk of early mortality. ScienceAlert reports: A machine learning model has now been taught to predict a person's years of life simply by looking at their retina, which is the tissue at the back of the eye. The algorithm is so accurate, it could predict the age of nearly 47,000 middle-aged and elderly adults in the United Kingdom within a bracket of 3.5 years. Just over a decade a
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EXCLUSIVE TikTok owner ByteDance's revenue growth slowed to 70% in 2021 - sources
Tik Tok logos are seen on smartphones in front of a displayed ByteDance logo in this illustration taken November 27, 2019. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File PhotoTikTok owner ByteDance saw its revenue grow 70% year on year to about $58 billion in 2021, slower growth than a year earlier as China tightens its regulation of big tech companies.According to two people familiar with the matter the numbers were revealed to a small group of employees at an internal meeting of the so
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AUSTRIA ADDS A LOTTERY TO COVID VACCINE MANDATE
A doctor vaccinates a person with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Vienna, Austria April 26, 2021. REUTERS/Lisi NiesnerAustria's conservative government said Thursday it was launching a national lottery to encourage holdouts to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, hours before parliament passed legislation that would introduce a national vaccination mandate. About 72% of the Austrian population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in Wester
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Microsoft-Activision deal gives merger speculators a new darling
Microsoft logo is seen on a smartphone placed on displayed Activision Blizzard logo in this illustration taken January 18, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/IllustrationHedge funds, which make profits by speculating on precarious takeovers, got a treat this week when Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) agreed to buy "call of duty" maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI.O) for US$68.7 billion dollars in cash. The transaction requires antitrust laws. Approved in the United States and other major jurisdictions, including
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Social Media Bans of Scientific Misinformation Aren't Helpful, Researchers Say
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The Royal Society is the UK's national academy of sciences. On Wednesday, it published a report on what it calls the "online information environment," challenging some key assumptions behind the movement to de-platform conspiracy theorists spreading hoax info on topics like climate change, 5G, and the coronavirus. Based on literature reviews, workshops and roundtables with academic experts and fact-checking groups, and two surveys in the UK, the
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The Feds Are Investigating a YouTuber Accused of Crashing a Plane For Views
A YouTuber and former Olympic snowboarder has been accused of crashing his plane on purpose for clicks, and the FAA has opened an investigation to get to the bottom of the growing mess. The Drive reports: Trevor Jacob has been the subject of online criticism after posting a YouTube video where he parachuted from a Taylorcraft BL64 plane and filmed it crashing into the hills of the Los Padres National Forest near Cuyama, California. The video outlined his newly-purchased Taylorcraft's final fligh
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How Europe Rolled Out 5G Without Hurting Aviation
gollum123 shares a report from CNN: Major international airlines are canceling flights to the United States over aviation industry fears that 5G technology could interfere with crucial onboard instruments. But it's business as usual in Europe, where the latest generation of high speed mobile networks is being rolled out without a hitch. Why is there a potential problem in the United States, but not Europe? It comes down to technical details.
Mobile phone companies in the United States are ro
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Samsung Falling Behind Apple In AR/VR Space Due To 'Obsession' With Foldable Smartphones
Samsung is significantly falling behind in the rush to bring augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices to market, partially due to the company's "obsession" with foldable smartphones, The Korea Herald reports. MacRumors reports: Samsung's main competitors, including Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and Sony, are developing or have already launched AR and VR devices amid massive industry-wide investments into the future of the technology, but it is unclear if Samsung is actively developing s
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Crypto.com CEO Confirms Hundreds of Accounts Were Hacked
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, Kris Marszalek, has finally confirmed that hundreds of user accounts were indeed compromised by hackers and had funds stolen as a result, though details of the exact method of breach remain unclear. Marszalek acknowledged the hack in an online interview with Bloomberg Wednesday, stating that around 400 customer accounts had been compromised. He also told Bloomberg that he had not received any outre
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Intel To Unveil 'Ultra Low-Voltage Bitcoin Mining ASIC' In February
Intel, one of the world's largest chip makers, is likely to unveil a specialized crypto-mining chip at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February, according to the conference's agenda (PDF). CoinDesk reports: One of Intel's "highlighted chip releases" at the conference is entitled "Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC." The session is scheduled for Feb. 23. This brings the company into direct competition with the likes of Bitmain and
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OpenSubtitles Hacked, 7 Million Subscribers' Details Leaked Online
OpenSubtitles, one of the largest repositories of subtitle files on the internet, has been hacked. TorrentFreak reports: Founded in 2006, the site was reportedly hacked in August 2021 with the attacker obtaining the personal data of nearly seven million subscribers including email and IP addresses, usernames and passwords. The site alerted users yesterday after the hacker leaked the database online.
"In August 2021 we received message on Telegram from a hacker, who showed us proof that he co
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Better.com's Founder Returns As CEO After Firing 900 Workers On Zoom
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Vishal Garg, the Better.com founder, who fired roughly 900 of his workers via Zoom last month and then took "time off," is returning to his position as the head of his mortgage lending company. "As you know, Better's C.E.O. Vishal Garg has been taking a break from his full-time duties to reflect on his leadership, reconnect with the values that make Better great and work closely with an executive coach," Better.com's board said on Tues
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WhatsApp Ordered To Help US Agents Spy On Chinese Phones
New submitter HillNKnowlton22 writes: U.S. federal agencies have been using a 35-year-old American surveillance law to secretly track WhatsApp users with no explanation as to why and without knowing whom they are targeting. In Ohio, a just-unsealed government surveillance application reveals that in November 2021, DEA investigators demanded the Facebook-owned messaging company track seven users based in China and Macau. The application reveals the DEA didn't know the identities of any of the tar
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Scientists Warn that Sixth Mass Extinction Has 'Probably Started'
Over the past 450 million years, life on Earth has been devastated by at least five mass extinctions, which are typically defined as catastrophes that wipe out more than 75 percent of species in a short amount of time. Many scientists have proposed that we are entering a Sixth Mass Extinction, this time driven by human activity, though debates still rage over the validity and consequences of this claim. From a report: Now, a team led by Robert Cowie, research professor at the University of Hawai
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Google Requiring All 'G Suite Legacy Free Edition' Users To Start Paying for Workspace this Year
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2020, G Suite became Google Workspace as part of a mass reorganization of the company's apps for the "future of work." Various plans were migrated over, and Google is now finally getting rid of the G Suite legacy free edition. "Google Apps" for businesses and schools were introduced 16 years ago and was discontinued in 2012. However, the company made no significant changes to those free accounts in the past decade, until today. In an email to administrator
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Intel CEO Urges Lawmakers To 'Not Waste This Crisis' in Chip Push
Intel Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger urged the U.S. and Europe to push ahead with efforts to bring back chip manufacturing, arguing that government funding is needed to address an overconcentration of production in Asia. From a report: Governments need to learn from the disruptions of the pandemic and consider the national-security implications of having about 80% of production in Asia, Gelsinger said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at The Year Ahead
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Biden To Expand National Security Agency Role in Government Cybersecurity
President Biden on Wednesday expanded the National Security Agency's role in protecting the U.S. government's most sensitive computer networks, issuing a directive intended to bolster cybersecurity within the Defense Department and intelligence agencies. From a report: The memorandum signed by Mr. Biden mandates baseline cybersecurity practices and standards, such as two-factor authentication and use of encryption, for so-called national security systems, which include the Defense Department and
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EU Wants To Build Its Own DNS Infrastructure With Built-in Filtering Capabilities
The European Union is interested in building its own recursive DNS service that will be made available to EU institutions and the general public for free. From a report: The proposed service, named DNS4EU, is currently in a project planning phase, and the EU is looking for partners to help build a sprawling infrastructure to serve all its current 27 member states. EU officials said they started looking into an EU-based centrally-managed DNS service after observing consolidation in the DNS market
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IRS Will Soon Require Selfies for Online Access
If you created an online account to manage your tax records with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), those login credentials will cease to work later this year. From a report: The agency says that by the summer of 2022, the only way to log in to irs.gov will be through ID.me, an online identity verification service that requires applicants to submit copies of bills and identity documents, as well as a live video feed of their faces via a mobile device. McLean, Va.-based ID.me was originally
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Instagrammers Are Genetically Replicating Their Pets
An anonymous reader shares a report: [...] Together, these furry duplicates are normalizing the world of animal cloning -- and they could be ushering in an era of petfluencer immortality. "Someone could clone their pet and replace the original. The world doesn't have to know. They may never know," says Melain Rodriguez, client service manager at ViaGen, which is behind the cloning of all the animals mentioned in this article. "Especially if it's one that looks exactly the same and they can just
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Opera Launches a Dedicated Crypto Browser
Opera has launched its Web3 "Crypto Browser" into beta with features like a built-in crypto wallet, easy access to cryptocurrency/NFT exchanges, support for decentralized apps (dApps) and more. From a report: The aim is to "simplify the Web3 user experience that is often bewildering for mainstream users," Opera EVP Jorgen Arnensen said in statement. A key feature is the built-in non-custodial wallet that will support blockchains including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Celo and Nervos from the get-go. It al
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Ericsson Sues Apple Again Over 5G Patent Licensing
Sweden's Ericsson has filed another set of patent infringement lawsuits against Apple in the latest salvo between the two companies over royalty payment for use of 5G wireless patents in iPhones. From a report: Both companies have already sued each other in the United States as negotiations failed over the renewal of a seven-year licensing contract for telecoms patents first struck in 2015. Ericsson sued first in October, claiming that Apple was trying to improperly cut down the royalty rates. T
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China Wants Internet Giants To Get Approval for Investments, Fundraisings
China's cyberspace regulator has drafted new guidelines that will require the country's large internet companies to obtain its approval before they undertake any investments or fundraisings, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The proposed requirements from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) will apply to any platform company with more than 100 million users, or with more than 10 billion yuan ($1.58 billion) in revenue, they said. Any i
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Doomsday Clock Panel To Set Risk of Global Catastrophe
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to unveil its measure of how close human civilisation is to the edge of extinction. From a report: On 24 October 1962, an American nuclear chemist, Harrison Brown, started to pen a guest editorial for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just as the Cuban missile crisis reached its climax. "I am writing on a plane en route from Los Angeles to Washington and for all I know this editorial ... may never be published," Brown said. "Never in history have people and
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Lab-Grown Hair Cells Could Be On the Way To Treat Baldness
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via MIT Technology Review: Biologists at several startups are applying the latest advances in genetic engineering to the age-old problem of baldness, creating new hair-forming cells that could restore a person's ability to grow hair. Some researchers tell MIT Technology Review they are using the techniques to grow human hair cells in their labs and even on animals. A startup called dNovo sent us a photograph of a mouse sprouting a dense clump o
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AMD Returns To Smartphone Graphics
AMD's GPU technology is returning to mobile handsets with Samsung's Exynos 2200 system-on-chip, which was announced on Tuesday. The Register reports: The Exynos 2200 processor, fabricated using a 4nm process, has Armv9 CPU cores and the oddly named Xclipse GPU, which is an adaptation of AMD's RDNA 2 mainstream GPU architecture. AMD was in the handheld GPU market until 2009, when it sold the Imageon GPU and handheld business for $65m to Qualcomm, which turned the tech into the Adreno GPU for its
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WHO says no evidence healthy children, adolescents need COVID-19 boosters
Photo Credit: Fabrice Coffrini | ReutersAt present, there is no evidence that healthy children and adolescents need booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, World Health Organization chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said on Tuesday. Speaking at a news briefing, she said that while there seems to be some waning of vaccine immunity over time against the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus, more research is needed to determine who needs a booster shot."There is curren
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NASA Scientists Estimate Tonga Blast At 10 Megatons
According to NASA researchers, the power of a massive volcanic eruption that took place on Saturday near the island nation of Tonga was equivalent to around 10 megatons of TNT. "That means the explosive force was more than 500 times as powerful as the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II," reports NPR. From the report: The blast was heard as far away as Alaska and was probably one of the loudest events to occur on Earth in over a century, according to Michael Pola
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Tesla investors urge judge to order Musk repay $13 bln for SolarCity deal
REUTERS/Mike Blake/File PhotoTesla Inc (TSLA.O) shareholders on Tuesday asked a judge to find that Elon Musk forced the company's board of directors into a deal for SolarCity in 2016 and wanted the CEO convicted, the electric vehicle maker one of the largest judgments in history paid $13 billion. "This case was always about whether the acquisition of SolarCity was a bailout from financial troubles, a bailout orchestrated by Elon Musk," said Randy Baron, a shareholders' at
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