Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has spent the past week or so using DMCA takedown requests to remove old Grand Theft Auto mods. The publisher hasn’t explained why it has started this sudden removal of old mods.
Source: Kotaku – Take-Two Is Removing Old GTA Mods Using DMCA Notices
Redmine is an open-source and one of the most popular project management and issue tracking systems written in the Ruby on Rails framework. It is a cross-platform and cross-database tool that allows you to manage multiple projects and sub-projects.
Source: LXer – Install Redmine on Ubuntu 20.04
Instagram influencers get a lot of flak, but they also get a lot of money and opportunities in the real world—when they’re good at the job. To reach a level of goodness, you need lots of followers, but there’s more to it than that. You want brand deals? You want a nice blue checkmark? You need to keep your followers…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Get Good at Being an Instagram Influencer
As Bitcoin prices skyrocketed earlier this year, all cryptocurrencies were under the microscope by people around the globe. Specifically, energy-consumption concerns arose as miners built out massive mining operations to execute the “proof-of-work” system that makes cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin tick. However, none of that matters if you are
Source: Hot Hardware – Malaysian Police Shamefully Steamroll 1,069 PCs Involved In Illegal Bitcoin Mining Operation
Facebook isn’t exactly enthusiastic about President Biden’s claim that it and other social networks are “killing people” by allowing COVID-19 misinformation to spread. The social media firm posted a refutation of the allegations, using data to suggest that something other than Facebook was responsible for a slowdown in vaccination rates and a rise in cases.
The company noted that vaccine acceptance in user polling had risen from 70 percent in January 2021 to as high as 85 percent in July, and that cultural group disparities had declined “considerably” over the same period. This was ahead of Biden’s goal of getting 70 percent of Americans vaccinated by July — to Facebook, this was a sign the company was “not the reason” the US fell short of that target.
Facebook added that Canada and the UK had higher vaccination percentages despite using the social network about as much as their American counterparts. There’s “more than Facebook” to the US results, the company said. It also pointed to its efforts to both promote accurate claims and fight falsehoods, including the use of misinformation labels, reduced exposure and takedowns.
The internet giant didn’t attempt to find an alternate explanation for US troubles. Some observers have pointed to a possible link between political affiliation and vaccination rates, but Facebook didn’t even hint at this in its refutal.
It’s not a flawless argument. Facebook is trying to draw a link between its polling data and the entire US, which doesn’t make for a neat and tidy comparison. The company also hasn’t shared estimates of how much COVID-19 misinformation slips through the cracks. The social site has a strong incentive to downplay its possible contribution to the problem given past complaints that it hasn’t done enough to stop misinformation campaigns.
At the same time, the data shifts the attention back to the Biden administration — it may need to provide more substantial data if it’s going to show that health misinformation on social networks like Facebook is a major threat, as the US Surgeon General recently said. If nothing else, it suggests the answer is a complicated one regardless of how much Facebook is responsible.
Source: Engadget – Facebook rejects Biden claim it’s ‘killing people’ with COVID-19 misinformation
“Well before China decided to kick out all of its bitcoin miners, they were already leaving in droves, and new data from Cambridge University shows they were likely headed to the United States,” reports CNBC:
The U.S. has fast become the new darling of the bitcoin mining world. It is the second-biggest mining destination on the planet, accounting for nearly 17% of all the world’s bitcoin miners as of April 2021. That’s a 151% increase from September 2020. “For the last 18 months, we’ve had a serious growth of mining infrastructure in the U.S.,” said Darin Feinstein, founder of Blockcap and Core Scientific. “We’ve noticed a massive uptick in mining operations looking to relocate to North America, mostly in the U.S.”
This dataset doesn’t include the mass mining exodus out of China, which led to half the world’s miners dropping offline, and experts tell CNBC that the U.S. share of the mining market is likely even bigger than the numbers indicate… “500,000 formerly Chinese miner rigs are looking for homes in the U.S,” said Marathon Digital’s Fred Thiel. “If they are deployed, it would mean North America would have closer to 40% of global hashrate by the end of 2022.”
America’s rising dominance is a simple case of luck meeting preparation. The U.S. has quietly been building up its hosting capacity for years… It also helps that the U.S. is also home to some of the cheapest sources of energy on the planet, many of which tend to be renewable. Because miners at scale compete in a low-margin industry, where their only variable cost is typically energy, they are incentivized to migrate to the world’s cheapest sources of power.
Thiel expects most new miners relocating to North America to be powered by renewables, or gas that is offset by renewable energy credits. While Castle Island Ventures founding partner, Nic Carter, points out that U.S. mining isn’t wholly renewable, he does say that miners here are much better about selecting renewables and buying offsets. “The migration is definitely a net positive overall,” he said. “Hashrate moving to the U.S., Canada, and Russia will mean much lower carbon intensity.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – More Bitcoin Miners Head to America, Partly for Cheaper Energy
The reigning queen of martial arts cinema, Michelle Yeoh, has offered up some info on her role in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Source: Gizmodo – Shang-Chi Actress Michelle Yeoh Provides New Details on Her Character
Hello! It’s time for Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon.
Source: Kotaku – Sunday Comics: That’s Nice
It’s really easy to judge other people’s relationships. In fact, we may not even realize when we’re doing it. But when you spend time with a couple, their dynamic usually becomes apparent relatively quickly, to the point where you may think you can identify their specific problems.
Source: LifeHacker – Answer These 15 Yes-or-No Questions to Help Evaluate the State of Your Relationship
With the alpha release of the Godot 4.0 open-source game engine approaching, a blog post today detailed the current graphics API support plans around this major game engine update…
Source: Phoronix – Godot 4 Is Focusing On Vulkan + OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenGL Likely For Godot 4.1
“China conducted a clandestine first test flight of a reusable suborbital vehicle Friday as a part of development of a reusable space transportation system,” reports Space News:
The vehicle launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center Friday and later landed at an airport just over 800 kilometers away at Alxa League in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) announced. No images nor footage nor further information, such as altitude, flight duration or propulsion systems, were provided. The CASC release stated however that the vehicle uses integrated aviation and space technologies and indicates a vertical takeoff and horizontal landing profile.
The test follows a September 2020 test flight of a “reusable experimental spacecraft”. The spacecraft orbited for days, releasing a small transmitting payload and later deorbited and landed horizontally. The spacecraft is widely believed to be a reusable spaceplane concept, though no images have emerged. Giant space and defense contractor CASC also developed that vehicle and stated that the new vehicle tested Friday can be used as a first stage of a reusable space transportation system. The implication is that the two vehicles will be combined for a fully reusable space transportation system. The developments have not come out of the blue. China stated in 2017 that it aimed to test a reusable spaceplane in 2020…
Chen Hongbo, from CASC’s China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), told Science and Technology Daily (Chinese) in 2017 that the reusable spacecraft would be capable of carrying both crew and payloads… Chen stated the aim was full reusability, moving beyond partial reusability of Falcon 9-like launchers. The spaceplane, the development and testing of which is to be completed by 2030, should be capable of being reused more than 20 times.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – China Secretively Launches Reusable Suborbital Vehicle for Space Transportation System
So, it’s time to make your first real estate investment. Whether you’re buying yourself a condo or house, or looking to flip one for profit, you’re taking a big step. We asked experts for some advice.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Make Your First Real Estate Investment
Devs across the world reveal their tools, language choices, and more. A survey of nearly 32,000 developers has confirmed the dominance of JavaScript, showing a remarkable 91 per cent using GitHub, and growth in use of AWS despite the efforts of Microsoft and Google.…
Source: LXer – JavaScript, GitHub, AWS crowned winners in massive survey of 32,000 developers
Thanks to Canonical’s distributed workforce with most of their employees working from home even pre-pandemic and the booming Linux ecosystem, the Ubuntu maker performed very well over 2020 and even grew its headcount back above 500 employees and managed to swing from a loss in 2019 to a profit in 2020…
Source: Phoronix – Canonical Has Been Weathering The Pandemic Well: Turned A Profit, Back Above 500 Employees
Enlarge (credit: University of Washington)
Thanks to the development of DNA-sequencing technology, it has become trivial to obtain the sequence of bases that encode a protein and translate that to the sequence of amino acids that make up the protein. But from there, we often end up stuck. The actual function of the protein is only indirectly by its sequence. Instead, the sequence dictates how the amino acid chain folds and flexes in three-dimensional space, forming a specific structure. That structure is typically what dictates the function of the protein, but obtaining it can require years of lab work.
For decades, researchers have tried to develop software that can take a sequence of amino acids and accurately predict the structure it will form. Despite this being a matter of chemistry and thermodynamics, we’ve only had limited success—until last year. That’s when Google’s DeepMind AI group announced the existence of AlphaFold, which can typically predict structures with a high degree of accuracy.
At the time, DeepMind said it would give everyone the details on its breakthrough in a future peer-reviewed paper, which it finally released yesterday. In the meantime, some academic researchers got tired of waiting, took some of DeepMind’s insights, and made their own. The paper describing that effort also was released yesterday.
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Source: Ars Technica – Google details its protein-folding software, academics offer an alternative
Clearly the quickest way to bypass Microsoft facial recognition, no?
Biometric authentication is a key piece of the tech industry’s plans to make the world password-less. But a new method for duping Microsoft’s Windows Hello facial-recognition system shows that a little hardware fiddling can trick the system into unlocking when it shouldn’t.
Services like Apple’s FaceID have made facial-recognition authentication more commonplace in recent years, with Windows Hello driving adoption even farther. Apple only lets you use FaceID with the cameras embedded in recent iPhones and iPads, and it’s still not supported on Macs at all. But because Windows hardware is so diverse, Hello facial recognition works with an array of third-party webcams. Where some might see ease of adoption, though, researchers from the security firm CyberArk saw potential vulnerability.
That’s because you can’t trust any old webcam to offer robust protections in how it collects and transmits data. Windows Hello facial recognition works only with webcams that have an infrared sensor in addition to the regular RGB sensor. But the system, it turns out, doesn’t even look at RGB data. Which means that with one straight-on infrared image of a target’s face and one black frame, the researchers found that they could unlock the victim’s Windows Hello–protected device.
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Source: Ars Technica – Hackers got past Windows Hello by tricking a webcam
Alder Lake is Intel’s next significant architectural shift for its family of Core processors consumer desktop and laptop product segments. Intel’s 12th generation processors will be built on an enhanced 10nm SuperFin process, feature a hybrid big.LITTLE-style core arrangement and support both DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 technologies.
The first Alder
Source: Hot Hardware – Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake vPro Desktop And Laptop CPU Launch Timeline Allegedly Revealed
Enlarge / Collectors say bare cartridges in “sous vide” condition can command a premium at auction. (credit: Aurich Lawson)
If you aren’t immersed in the world of high-end video game collecting, it’s probably hard to understand why someone paid in excess of $1.5 million for a single, shrinkwrap-sealed boxed copy of Super Mario 64 last Sunday. But if you talk to people who have been collecting games and following this insular world for decades, you’ll find… well, they also think it’s hard to understand.
The confusing part isn’t even the sheer amount of money being spent on a video game box that no one will ever open, much less play. Ever since an early sealed printing of Super Mario Bros. sold for over $100,000 in 2019, the general consensus in the world of high-end game collecting was that an eventual seven-figure game sale was inevitable. But even after a $660,000 Super Mario Bros. sale two months ago, many didn’t think the flashy million-dollar barrier would be broken so quickly. “I honestly thought that this was a milestone that we wouldn’t pass until years from now,” Heritage Auctions Video Game Consignment Director Valarie McLeckie told Ars.
More than the timing, though, game collectors that spoke to Ars expressed near-universal shock that this was the first game to command such a high price. In the past, the small handful of games that have sold for $100,000 or more have all been extremely rare and notable in some way. The Legend of Zelda that temporarily set an $870,000 sales record earlier in Heritage’s recent weekend auction, for instance, was described in the listing as “the only copy from one of the earliest production runs that we’ve ever had the opportunity to offer” for an iconic game.
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Source: Ars Technica – Collectors are as confused as you are about that .56M Super Mario 64 sale
Even if you spend a decent amount of time, money, and effort keeping your garden, lawn, and/or other parts of your landscape looking good, you may be leaving out some of your yard’s largest residents: Trees. It can be easy to forget about trees, especially when they were already on your property when you moved in.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Care for the Trees in Your Yard
Enlarge / We just assume this is what the slots in an online cryptocurrency casino look like, but I guess we can see them in action on Twitch. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Tyler Niknam was getting out of Texas. Niknam, 30, is a top streamer on Twitch, where he’s better known as Trainwrecks to his 1.5 million followers. For hours on end, Niknam was hitting the slots on Stake.com, an online cryptocurrency casino and his most prominent Twitch sponsor, to live audiences of 25,000. He’d been winning big, sometimes as much as $400,000 in crypto in one fell swoop, and he never seemed to go broke. The problem? It wasn’t allowed.
If you visit Stake on a US-based browser, a message will quickly pop up on the site: “Due to our gaming license, we cannot accept players from the United States.” Though Stake doesn’t possess a gambling license in any state, Nikam and other US gamblers easily circumvent this by using VPNs. Promoting gambling sites that cannot operate in the US and making money by referring US residents to them may constitute promoting illegal gambling, legal experts told WIRED.
“Canada needs to happen asap,” Niknam wrote in a private Discord DM to Felix “xQc” Lengyel, 25, Twitch’s number two streamer. Lengyel briefly streamed slots but stopped in June. “You cannot show you’re on Stake at all.” A few days later, Niknam arrived in Canada, where he settled into a routine—gambling in a mostly empty apartment, sometimes more than a dozen hours a day. (Niknam and Lengyel did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment.)
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Source: Ars Technica – Twitch streamers rake in millions with a shady crypto gambling boom
