What happens when a group of mercenaries attempts to invade a zombie quarantine zone and rob a casino? We don’t know, but Zack Snyder is about to show us.
Source: io9 – Zack Snyder’s Next Movie Will Be an ‘Epic and Crazy’ Zombie Heist for Netflix
Health insurance giant Aetna has teamed up with Apple to create a health-tracking app for Apple Watch that will have access to Aetna members’ medical data and offer monetary rewards for meeting personalized wellness goals.
The idea is to go beyond basic activity monitors and generic step goals, the two companies said in a debut event today, January 29, in Boston. Instead, the app, called Attain, will create tailored goals—drawing from Aetna members’ own insurance and medical information to do so—and provide nudges and incentives that aim to boost long-term health.
For any Aetna members wary of sharing such health tracking data with their insurer and Apple, the two companies emphasized that the app was packed with security features (such as continuous authentication) and privacy features (such as opt-in data sharing choices). Perhaps most importantly, Aetna promised that the “[i]nformation from this program will not be used for underwriting, premium or coverage decisions.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Aetna makes an Apple Watch app—promises not to use activity data against you
Back in high school, Denver Jackson got the idea for a science fiction and fantasy movie called Esluna: A World Beyond, about a land ruled by people with the power to control the wind. Eventually, that idea turned into a web series that recently launched its first season—something Jackson animated by himself.
Source: io9 – Meet a Guy Who Taught Himself to Animate His Own Sci-Fi Web Series
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The San Francisco Examiner: San Francisco could be the first city in the nation to ban city agencies from using facial recognition surveillance technology under proposed legislation announced Tuesday by Supervisor Aaron Peskin. The legislation, which will be introduced at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, echoes ordinances adopted by cities including Oakland and Berkeley, as well as by the transit agency BART, that require legislative approval before city agencies or law enforcement adopt new surveillance technologies or policies for the use of existing technologies. However, the new proposal takes things a step further with an outright ban on facial recognition technology.
The San Francisco proposal would not only ban facial recognition but would also require the Board of Supervisors to approve new surveillance technology in general. The board would have to find that the benefits of the technology outweigh the costs, that civil rights will be protected and that the technology will not disparately impact a community or group. Peskin portrayed the proposal to be introduced Tuesday as an extension of his “Privacy First Policy,” approved by voters in November, which sets new limits and transparency requirements on the collection and use of personal data by companies doing business with The City.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – New Proposal Would Ban Government Facial Recognition Use In San Francisco
Rogue-9 on YouTube has released a video that details the cheating that is going on in Battlefield V. He detected the cheaters in the video by entering matches as a spectator and recording video footage of the aimbots and wall hacks in use. He predicts that Battlefield V will be completely unplayable in a few months.
Battlefield 5 has had probably the roughest start it could possibly have had. No proper marketing, an insulting political crusade and then a rushed launch of an unfinished game. But now, to add insult to injury, it appears that the cheating communities have discovered that BFV is significantly compromised at this point and I am seeing suspicious players pretty much every day. Here are some of the guys I have spectated and if this rise in brazen cheating continues, BFV will be unplayable within the next couple of months.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – The Anti-Cheat System Is Broken in Battlefield V
We’ve seen the original Doom made “HD” using AI neural networks, now it’s the turn of Final Fantasy VII, with a mod for the PC version of the game creating backgrounds that have 4x the resolution.
Source: Kotaku – Mod Creates “HD” Final Fantasy VII Using AI Neural Networks
When Belgium declared that loot boxes were illegal and amounted to gambling, EA didn’t react well — it not only defended the practice, it refused to honor the law and insisted its practice was legal. Authorities saw things differently, however, and…
Source: Engadget – EA stops selling ‘FIFA’ currency in Belgium due to loot box law
The Alpine Linux distribution that is lightweight and security focused and based on Busybox and musl libc is out with their version 3.9.0 feature release. The latest improvements to this operating system continue with a focus of Alpine being used within containers and other lightweight use-cases…
Source: Phoronix – Alpine 3.9 Brings ARMv7 Support, Switches Back To OpenSSL, Improves GRUB
Due to an economic slowdown in China and diminishing demand for new iPhones, Apple’s profits in its most recent quarter were flat compared with a year earlier. “The disappointing financial performance had been expected since Jan. 2, when Apple, for the first time in 16 years, revised its forecast for the quarter,” reports The New York Times. “But the announcement on Tuesday indicates a difficult road head for Apple, which just five months ago became the first company to be worth more than $1 trillion. The company said it expected between $55 billion and $59 billion in revenue in the current quarter, just below analysts’ expectations for $59 billion. Apple’s earnings per share were $4.18, beating analysts’ expectations by a penny.”
In addition to the quarterly earnings, Apple reported revenue of $84.3 billion, a decline of 5 percent from one year ago. “Revenue from iPhone declined 15 percent from the prior year, while total revenue from all other products and services grew 19 percent,” Apple said in a press release. Analysts had estimated revenue of $83.97 billion and earnings of $4.17 per share. “While it was disappointing to miss our revenue guidance, we manage Apple for the long term, and this quarter’s results demonstrate that the underlying strength of our business runs deep and wide,” said Tim Cook. Apple’s active install base of 1.4 billion is “a great testament to the satisfaction and loyalty of our customers, and it’s driving our services business to new records thanks to our large and fast-growing ecosystem,” Cook said. The Verge adds: “iPhones account for 900 million of those devices. iPad revenues were up 17 percent against the year-ago quarter; Mac was up 9 percent; and Wearables/Home/Accessories were up by 33 percent.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Apple Says Profits Were Flat, Citing Slump In China
The Grapevine Jussie Smollett Reportedly Hospitalized in Chicago Following Racist, Homophobic Attack [Updated] | Adequate Man Has Trump Seen Jared Naked? | Jezebel A Young Woman Fell and Died Trying to Carry Her Baby’s Stroller In a Subway Station With No Elevator | Splinter Howard Schultz’s Hostage Negotiation | The…
Source: Kotaku – The Grapevine Jussie Smollett Reportedly Hospitalized in Chicago Following Racist, Homophobic Attack
Sometimes, it is better to let dreams be dreams. A 19-year-old man from Nice, France learned that the hard way when he got the wild idea to take a PlayStation 4 off the shelf of a supermarket, walk to the fruit section, weigh it, print out a price tag sticker, put it on the box, and then buy the console for the price…
Source: Kotaku – French Man Gets Four Months In Prison For Replacing PS4 Price Tag With Fruit Sticker
In the original Care Bears Movie, the emotional creatures journey beyond the borders of Care-a-lot in a magical flying boat known as the Cloud Clipper that’s capable of traveling between worlds. While a wooden cloud boat shooting through the sky might have worked for the cartoons of the ‘80s, times, ahem, have changed.
Source: io9 – The Care Bears Now Drive a Magical Space Ship, Because It’s 2019
Apple has been happy to tell you how many iOS devices it has shipped, but how many iPhones are there in the wild, really? You now know. As part of a call discussing the company’s mixed earnings, CFO Luca Maestri revealed that Apple has an installed b…
Source: Engadget – Apple’s iPhone installed base hits 900 million
GameStop announced today that it has called off a decision to find a private buyer for the company and its subsidiaries. “The announcement ushered in the public company’s largest stock-value dip in over 10 years, seeing it plummet in one day from $15.49 to (as of press time) $11.28 — a dive of roughly 27 percent,” reports Ars Technica. From the report: The Texas-based gaming retailer had been linked to acquisition rumors, as The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that multiple private equity firms had been circling GameStop — and its subsidiaries, including the merch-focused ThinkGeek and the gaming magazine Game Informer. That report had suggested a deal might close by mid-February.
However, Tuesday’s statement indicated that prospective deals fell through “due to the lack of available financing on terms that would be commercially acceptable to a prospective acquirer.” The rest of the statement offers little clear hint of the company’s next steps beyond pumping the cash from a recent subsidiary sale into options such as “reducing the company’s outstanding debt, funding share repurchases, or reinvesting in core video game and collectibles businesses to drive growth.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Game Retailer GameStop Says It Can’t Sell Itself, Sees Stock Drive 27 Percent
Over the last five years, the global management consulting company Accenture has developed proprietary automation software called the SynOps platform that it says has helped it cut 40,000 jobs within the company.
Source: Gizmodo – Automation Software That Helped Consulting Firm Cut 40,000 Jobs Is Reportedly Now for Sale
This is a video of woodworker and lover of hidden compartments Adam Lundell demonstrating the latest iteration of his magic themed coffee table (previous version seen HERE, another hidden compartment table he built HERE). It’s pretty sweet, and he definitely went even heavier on the hidden compartments this time. Can you ever have too many hidden compartments? SPOILER: Only if there’s so many you forget they’re there and sell the table with valuables still inside. I remember not too long ago I sold an entertainment stand without realizing I still had a USB stick tucked away under one of the DVD drawers. “What was on it?!” I don’t want to say. “Tell me!” I shouldn’t, really. “PLEASE.” Alright, it was…no — I can’t. “I have to know!” FINE IT WAS MY PS4 BACKUP GAME SAVE FILES, OKAY?! “Well that was anticlimactic.” Man I really hope those pictures don’t surface online. “Wait, what?!” Nothing — nothing.
Keep going for the video, it’s pretty sweet.
Source: Geekologie – Man Demonstrates His Latest Magic Themed Hidden Compartment Coffee Table
Apple’s massive Facetime bug, which “allows for users to eavesdrop on others while a call is still ringing”, was found as early as last week by a 14 year-old kid who was trying to get his friends together for a Fortnite session.
Source: Kotaku – 14 Year-Old Kid Found Apple’s Facetime Bug During Fortnite Session, Tried To Warn Apple
Recently unsealed court documents revealed that Facebook employees were aware children were running up massive tabs spending money on games. Now lawmakers have some questions for the social networking giant. Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard B…
Source: Engadget – Senators have questions for Facebook over in-game payment policies
AMD’s Q4 earnings have been highly anticipated, especially after its rival in the graphics arena — NVIDIA — yesterday revised its revenue guidance downwardby $500 million sending its shares plunging. Luckily for AMD, it was mostly good news for the company.
AMD recorded Q4 2018 GAAP revenue of $1.42 billion (analysts were expecting $1.44
Source: Hot Hardware – AMD Beats On Q4 Earnings With Strong Ryzen And EPYC Sales Sending Shares Higher
The versatile Rosario Dawson—last seen as Claire Temple on various shows across Marvel’s Netflix slate; last heard playing the voice of the “Power Caller” elevator in Sorry to Bother You—has another new genre project: the Zombieland sequel, which also just announced its full title, too.
Source: io9 – The Undead Don’t Stand a Chance in Zombieland: Double Tap, Especially With Rosario Dawson Along for the Ride
