It’s finally Friday, and there are three huge video game releases and the new season of Stranger Things to possibly check out. Here are some tips to help you decide how to spend your weekend.
Source: LifeHacker – Help, There’s Too Much Stuff This Weekend
Eugene Kaspersky told news agency Reuters on Friday that his cyber security firm that bears his name would see a ‘single digit’ drop in U.S. sales this year as a result of suspicions about his company’s ties to the Russian government, but global revenue should still increase. From a report: By turns frustrated and defiant in an 80-minute interview in his Moscow office, the founder and head of the embattled antivirus software maker denounced what he called an “information war” against his company, repeatedly asserting that “we’ve done nothing wrong.” Anton Shingarev, Kaspersky Lab’s vice president of public affairs, also told Reuters during the interview the company had abandoned efforts to sell its services to the U.S. government and that it would wind down its Washington-area subsidiary, KGSS. Kaspersky Lab has become a lightning rod in recent months as it has faced allegations by the U.S. government that its antivirus products can be used by Russian spies to conduct cyber espionage. Office Depot, Staples and Best Buy have stopped selling Kaspersky’s security suite in their stores.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Kaspersky CEO Says Hack Claims Cutting US Cyber Security Sales
Computer scientists have developed an artificially intelligent system that’s an improvement over existing techniques used to crack CAPTCHAs, those super-annoying prompts that check to see whether you’re a human or a bot. For security experts, it means that existing CAPTCHA-based systems may soon be obsolete—if they…
Source: Gizmodo – New AI System Makes CAPTCHAs Even More Vulnerable to Hacks
Enlarge / Schreier even got his hands on leaked concept art for Visceral’s canceled Star Wars game, which was code-named Ragtag. It would have starred a Han Solo-like character named Dodger. (credit: Kotaku/EA)
Here at Ars Technica, we’re contemplating our own Rogue One-styled heist adventure in the near future. In our case, instead of sending rebel troops to die in search of the Death Star’s plans, we’re thinking about ordering a few clumsy nerds to steal the rolodex and contact list of Kotaku’s Jason Schreier.
I mean, not really, but the Star Wars metaphor is apt today, as the reporter published a massive story on Friday that explains what went down behind the scenes before EA pulled a “close a studio and cancel a game” double-whammy last week. In his report, Schreier cites “nearly a dozen” anonymous sources from the worlds of EA and its former subsidiary Visceral Games.
The lengthy report expands on Schreier’s own claims last week that Visceral’s closure came for reasons that weren’t apparent in the official EA announcement. Instead, its closure, and the shutdown of a game project codenamed Ragtag, boiled down to a general stink over a costly and badly organized production period, not to mention the awkward shoehorning of EA’s Frostbite graphics engine (which EA had mandated the studio to use). “Like BioWare on Dragon Age and Mass Effect, Visceral found itself trying to make a third-person game on an engine built for first-person shooters,” Schreier writes, and based on Andromeda‘s woes, it’s not hard to imagine the havoc that he says resulted.
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Source: Ars Technica – Kotaku’s scum-and-villainy story of why EA shuttered a Star Wars game
Source: Engadget – YouTube creators are less likely to lose ad money
This is the just released Starbucks Zombie Frappuchino, a limited time beverage released for Halloween (and only available from October 26th to 31st). The green caramel apple flavored beverage is supposed to resemble zombie skin with a dollop of dark mocha blood and pink whipped cream brains on top, although the brains look more like the turd of a dog who ate crayons to me. Still, if it’s anything like their Unicorn Frappucino from earlier this year, everyone will still go buy one, post the absolutely perfect picture of it on Instagram, then complain how it tasted like complete ass, like you could honestly expect anything different.
Keep going for a review of the drink by Business Insider (SPOILER: they didn’t like it).
Source: Geekologie – So, We’ve Come To This: Starbucks Unveils A Zombie Frappuccino For Halloween
On-Line PLC, a British provider of stock market data, today saw its shares climb nearly 400% after changing its name to On-Line Blockchain PLC. From a report: “Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are a new and exciting area we have been working on for some time,” the Essex-based company said in a statement on Thursday. “We feel the time is right to re-name the company to reflect these developments, where we believe the future growth will be in our sector.” The shares pared gains after the company published a follow-up release on Friday, cautioning investors that the development of its blockchain product is still at an early stage. Still, the 238 percent rise as of 2:36 p.m. in London leaves the company’s market value of 4.4 million pounds ($5.8 million) at its highest since 2005.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – British Company Adds the Word ‘Blockchain’ to Its Name, Sees Its Shares Surge 394%
The Kinect is officially dead. But the reality is that Microsoft signed the do-all sensor’s fate years ago. Faced with slumping hardware sales in 2014, then-new Xbox chief Phil Spencer had a decision to make. Either Microsoft would drop the price of…
Source: Engadget – Kinect’s value to artists overshadowed its gaming roots
University of Helsinki researchers have developed artificial intelligence software, which can evaluate the maturity of a preterm infant’s brain directly from an EEG. As discussed here, the EEG-based brain maturity evaluation systems is the first of its kind in the world. The analysis software is based on machine learning. EEG readings are fed into a computer, and the software calculated hundreds of computational features from each measurement without intervention from the doctor. All of these features were combined to provide a estimate of the EEG maturational age of the infant. This should aid in treatment of pre-term infants going forward.
One in ten live births is a premature one, and approximately half of all patients in neonatal intensive care are there because of preterm birth. Late pregnancy is a time of very rapid brain development for the fetus — the brain’s electrical activity changes almost every week. The brain must function in order to develop correctly.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Artificial intelligence to Evaluate Brain Maturity of Preterm Infants
IBM research has announced a new computing architecture called “in-memory” computing. The concept is to use one device for both storing and processing information. They believe this new prototype technology will enable ultra-dense, low-power, and massively parallel computing systems that are especially useful for AI applications. Sounds to me like the neural net processor might become a reality. T-800 cpu anyone?
“This is an important step forward in our research of the physics of AI, which explores new hardware materials, devices and architectures,” says Evangelos Eleftheriou, PhD, an IBM Fellow and co-author of an open-access paper in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications. “As the CMOS scaling laws break down because of technological limits, a radical departure from the processor-memory dichotomy is needed to circumvent the limitations of today’s computers.”
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – IBM Scientists Say Radical New ‘In-Memory’ Architecture Will Speed Up Computers
Just a couple of weeks ago, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey responded to the #WomenBoycotTwitter movement on his company’s microblogging platform with a promise to help Twitter “take a more aggressive stance” toward hate speech and sexual harassment. A few…
Source: Engadget – Twitter’s new hate and violence policies go into effect November 22nd
In addition to a bag full of free candy, dressing up in a costume this Halloween can also score you a discounted burrito.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Get a Chipotle Burrito For Next Week
To little surprise considering all of Feral’s Vulkan driver help recently, their racing game port announced earlier today, F1 2017 for Linux, will use the new graphics API…
Source: Phoronix – F1 2017 On Linux Will Support Vulkan
On Thursday, the deadline for the federal government to publicly release all of its files relating to the JFK assassination arrived and, for a moment, it appeared that it would actually happen. But at the last minute, President Trump delayed the release of the most sensitive files. As expected, intelligence agencies …
Source: Gizmodo – Here’s What’s Going on With the JFK Assassination Files
Trump’s Department of Justice is trying to get a do-over with its campaign to get backdoors onto iPhones and into secure messaging services. The policy rebrand even has its own made-up buzzword. They’re calling it “responsible encryption.”
After Dep…
Source: Engadget – Great, now there’s ‘responsible encryption’
For the most part, Android keeps getting better, but it’s certainly not immune to privacy concerns that plague every operating system and smartphone. And as it turns out, Google snuck a questionable feature into the operating system with a recent update. A new permission called “activity recognition” may be tracking…
Source: LifeHacker – Android Is Quietly Sharing Your Physical Activity with Other Apps
“The house of the future should represent the lifestyle of young people.”
Source: TreeHugger – Baitasi House of the Future is built inside a house of the past
If you don’t own a pressure cooker, today’s a great day to fix that, as Amazon’s knocked the highly-rated Instant Pot IP-DUO60 all the way down to $81. While that’s not as good as a one-day $70 deal they ran at the beginning of October, it’s still $19 less than usual, and a great chance to save if you want to use it…
Source: LifeHacker – Just In Time For Thanksgiving Dinner Prep, Amazon’s Discounting a Pair of Instant Pots
Harassment and abuse on social media freaking suck. What also sometimes sucks: various platforms’ inability or reluctance to effectively deal with it. But sometimes you’ve got to focus on what you can control and let go of the rest, which in this case means reporting harassment.
Source: LifeHacker – Reporting Abusive DMs on Instagram Is Surprisingly Hard
The second generation of Paris’ bike-sharing fleet will see 20,000 bikes hit the streets next year, and 30% of those will feature an electric drivetrain.
Source: TreeHugger – 30% of the new bikes in Paris’ Vélib’ Métropole bike-share system will be electric
