Ugur Sahin and and Özlem Türeci. The BBC calls them “the husband and wife team behind one of the most successful Covid vaccines” — the couple who co-founded the German biotech company BioNTech in 2008, “exploring new technology involving messenger RNA to treat cancer.”

And though they partnered with Pfizer to ues the same approach for their Covid vaccine, “Now the doctors are hopeful it could lead to new treatments for melanoma, bowel cancer and other tumour types.”

BioNTech has several trials in progress, including one where patients are given a personalised vaccine, to prompt their immune system to attack their disease. The mRNA technology being used works by sending an instruction or blueprint to cells to produce an antigen or protein. In Covid this antigen is part of the spike protein of the virus. In cancer it would be a marker on the surface of tumour cells. This teaches the immune system to recognise and target affected cells for destruction.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Prof Tureci said: “mRNA acts as a blueprint and allows you to tell the body to produce the drug or the vaccine… and when you use mRNA as a vaccine, the mRNA is a blueprint for the ‘wanted poster’ of the enemy — in this case cancer antigens which distinguish cancer cells from normal cells.”

Harnessing the power of mRNA to produce vaccines was unproven until Covid. But the success of mRNA vaccines in the pandemic has encouraged scientists working with the technology in cancer.

The Guardian notes that the couple said cancer-targetting vaccines could be available “before 2030”, though Özlem Türeci warns that “As scientists we are always hesitant to say we will have a cure for cancer. We have a number of breakthroughs and we will continue to work on them.”

BioNTech was working on mRNA cancer vaccines before the pandemic struck but the firm pivoted to produce Covid vaccines in the face of the global emergency. The firm now has several cancer vaccines in clinical trials.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Vaccines to Treat Cancer Possible by 2030, Say BioNTech Founders

Wikipedia describes Homestar Runner as “a blend of surreal humour, self-parody, and references to popular culture, in particular video games, classic television, and popular music.” But after launching in 2000, the web-based cartoon became a cultural phenomenon, co-creator Mike Chapman remembered in 2017:

On the same day we received a demo of a song that John Linnell from They Might Be Giants recorded for a Strong Bad Email and a full-size working Tom Servo puppet from Jim Mallon from Mystery Science Theater 3000…. The Homestar references in the Buffy and Angel finales forever ago were huge. And there was this picture of Joss Whedon in a Strong Bad shirt from around that time that someone sent us that we couldn’t believe. Years later, a photo of Geddy Lee from Rush wearing a Strong Bad hat on stage circulated which similarly freaked us out. We have no idea if he knew what Strong Bad was, but our dumb animal character was on his head while he probably shredded ‘Working Man’ so I’ll take it!

After a mutli-year hiatus starting around 2009, the site has only been updating sporadically — and some worried that the end of Flash also meant the end of the Flash-based cartoon and its web site altogether. But on the day Flash Player was officially discontinued — December 31st, 2020 — a “post-Flash update” appeared at HomestarRunner.com:
What happened our website? Flash is finally dead-dead-dead so something drastic had to be done so people could still watch their favorite cartoons and sbemails with super-compressed mp3 audio and hidden clicky-clicky easter eggs…!

[O]nce you click “come on in,” you’ll find yourself in familiar territory thanks to the Ruffle Project. It emulates Flash in such a way that all browsers and devices can finally play our cartoons and even some games…. Your favorite easter eggs are still hidden and now you can even choose to watch a YouTube version if there is one.

Keep in mind, Ruffle is still in development so not everything works perfectly. Games made after, say 2007, will probably be pretty janky but Ruffle plans on ulitmately supporting those too one day. And any cartoons with video elements in them (Puppet Jams, death metal) will just show you an empy box where the video should be. But hang in there and one day everything will be just like it was that summer when we got free cable somehow and Grandma still lived in the spare bedroom.

And since then, new content has quietly been appearing at HomestarRunner.com. (Most recently, Thursday the site added a teaser for an upcoming Halloween video.)

The Homestar Runner wiki is tracking this year’s new content, which includes:

Strong Bad livestreaming his play of a text adventure (titled “Disk 4 of 12 — Vampire’s Castle”) on September 19thStrong Sad streaming a demo of the expando deck for Trogdor!! The Board Game (July 2)A Twitch parody in which Strong Bad livestreams a speedrun on a horrific beef-themed game (titled “Strong-Play: Marzipan Beef Reverser”) on April 25thA new Strong Bad Email on April 1st

And past videos are now also being uploaded on the site’s official YouTube channel.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – How ‘Homestar Runner’ Re-Emerged After the End of Flash

From a report:
Filmmaker Craig Zobel has been tapped by HBO Max to direct the first two episodes of The Penguin, its much-awaited Batman spinoff. He will also serve as executive producer of the show, with Lauren LeFranc writing the script. Starring in The Penguin is Colin Farrell, who played the villainous Oswald Cobblepot in The Batman earlier this year. The Penguin will focus its attention on Cobblepot’s notorious past and trace his rise to power in Gotham.

Zobel is already part of the family, having previously directed The Mare of Easttown for HBO Max. The prolific director also applied his talents to episodes of Westworld, The Leftovers, and American Gods…

If all goes according to schedule, viewers could be enjoying The Penguin by the end of 2023.

The article also notes that Zobel also helped co-create Homestar Runner in its original incarnation as a parody children’s picture book.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – HBO Max Picks ‘Homestar Runner’ Co-Creator to Direct Batman Spin-off Series ‘The Penguin’

In 2017 Google committed $1 billion to a program called “Grow with Google,” and in 2018 launched “Google Career Certificates.”

Fortune looks at the success of those programs — and their newest evolution:

These online educational programs are focused on helping learners land jobs that are in high demand, including in digital marketing, IT support , data analytics, project management, and UX design. More than 300,000 people have graduated from Google’s Career Certificates program, and 75% of these grads report they’ve found a new job, higher pay, or a promotion within six months of completing of the program.

Today, Grow with Google takes this program a step further by developing university-industry partnerships. Grow with Google tells Fortune exclusively of the launch of its partnerships with top universities to offer specialized career certificates. These specialized programs build on Grow with Google’s existing programs, but offer more industry-specific take on the material….

The specializations include:
– Fundamentals of Data Analytics in the Public Sector with R by the University of Michigan
– Construction Management by Columbia Engineering
– Financial Analysis — Skills for Success by the University of Illinois’ Gies School of Business
– Sustainability Analyst Fundamentals by Arizona State University.

“This is really a tipping point for higher ed,” says Lisa Gevelber, founder of Grow with Google. “Educational institutions have always been the place that people went from the world of classroom learning to the world of work. But what we’re seeing here is higher ed really adopting more innovative, flexible models to make sure that students of all sorts have access to the knowledge to be successful in the workforce….”

The courses were developed by industry experts at Google, along with faculty at the hosting universities. Industry employers were also asked for input on important course content.
After finishing courses, students gain access to an online list of the jobs that the program qualifies them for. This includes listings from Google’s 150-employer consortium that specifically hire graduates of Google Career Certificate programs — including Google itself.

Gevelber explains to Fortune that “At the end of the day, no one is taking a class to take a class. They’re all taking this class to get a real economic outcome for their family. We want to ensure they have the skills they need and employers are laying and waiting to hire them.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – New Specialized Career Certifications Created by ‘Grow with Google’ Through University-Industry Partnerships

“Europe is aiming to launch a technology demonstration satellite for secure, quantum-encrypted communications in 2024,” reports Space.com, “with a view to developing a larger constellation.”
The satellite, Eagle-1, will be the first space-based quantum key distribution (QKD) system for the European Union and could lead to an ultrasecure communications network for Europe, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA).

Eagle-1 will spend three years in orbit testing the technologies needed for a new generation of secure communications. The satellite will demonstrate the “feasibility of quantum key distribution technology — which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to distribute encryption keys in such a way that any attempt to eavesdrop is immediately detected — within the EU using a satellite-based system,” according to ESA…

“European security and sovereignty in a future world of quantum computing is critical to the success of Europe and its Member States,” Steve Collar, CEO of SES, said in the statement. He added that the goal is “to advance quantum communications and develop the Eagle-1 system to support secure and sovereign European networks of the future.”

SES will be leading a consortium of more than 20 European countries, according to the ESA’s statement:

Eagle-1 will demonstrate the feasibility of quantum key distribution technology — which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to distribute encryption keys in such a way that any attempt to eavesdrop is immediately detected — within the EU using a satellite-based system. To do so, the system will build on key technologies developed under ESA’s Scylight programme, with the aim of validating vital components supplied within the EU….

It will allow the EU to prepare for a sovereign, autonomous cross-border quantum secure communications network.
The system will initially use an upgraded optical ground terminal from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) alongside a new optical ground terminal to be developed by a team from the Netherlands. The Eagle-1 platform satellite from Italian company Sitael will carry a quantum-key payload built by Tesat Spacecom of Germany and will be operated by Luxembourg-headquartered SES.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Europe Plans to Launch a Quantum Encryption Satellite for Ultrasecure Communications in 2024

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: UNDARK has an interesting interview with NYU professor emeritus Gary Marcus (PhD in brain and cognitive sciences, MIT) about Why Mastering Language Is So Difficult for AI. Marcus, who has had a front-row seat for many of the developments in AI, says we need to take AI advances with a grain of salt.

Starting with GPT-3, Marcus begins, “I think it’s an interesting experiment. But I think that people are led to believe that this system actually understands human language, which it certainly does not. What it really is, is an autocomplete system that predicts next words and sentences. Just like with your phone, where you type in something and it continues. It doesn’t really understand the world around it.

“And a lot of people are confused by that. They’re confused by that because what these systems are ultimately doing is mimicry. They’re mimicking vast databases of text. And I think the average person doesn’t understand the difference between mimicking 100 words, 1,000 words, a billion words, a trillion words — when you start approaching a trillion words, almost anything you can think of is already talked about there. And so when you’re mimicking something, you can do that to a high degree, but it’s still kind of like being a parrot, or a plagiarist, or something like that. A parrot’s not a bad metaphor, because we don’t think parrots actually understand what they’re talking about. And GPT-3 certainly does not understand what it’s talking about.” Marcus also has cautionary words about Google’s LaMDA (“It’s not sentient, it has no idea of the things that it is talking about.”), driverless cars (“Merely memorizing a lot of traffic situations that you’ve seen doesn’t convey what you really need to understand about the world in order to drive well”), OpenAI’s DALL-E (“A lot of AI right now leverages the not-necessarily-intended contributions by human beings, who have maybe signed off on a ‘terms of service’ agreement, but don’t recognize where this is all leading to”), and what’s motivating the use of AI at corporations (“They want to solve advertisements. That’s not the same as understanding natural language for the purpose of improving medicine. So there’s an incentive issue.”). Still, Marcus says he’s heartened by some recent AI developments: “People are finally daring to step out of the deep-learning orthodoxy, and finally willing to consider “hybrid” models that put deep learning together with more classical approaches to AI. The more the different sides start to throw down their rhetorical arms and start working together, the better.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Why Mastering Language Is So Difficult For AI

Last week the Los Angeles Times published a sympathetic portrait of Robbi Jade Lew, the woman facing unproven allegations of cheating in a high-stakes poker match.

This week the newspaper profiled the man making those accusations — Garrett Adelstein, known “as an affable guy who is known for taking even big losses in stride.”

“Garrett would have reacted normally if his opponent made a good, even heroic, call that cost him $100,000,” said Jennifer Shahade, a pro poker player and chess champion. “I think the initial hand, the call and the situation would be suspicious under any circumstances, any gender.”

In the profile we learn that Adelstein has 14 years of experience as a professional poker, and is “one of the game’s best and most profitable high-stakes cash players, known to viewers of popular casino broadcasts for his loose-aggressive style of no-limit hold ’em and his willingness to buy in for enormous sums of money, bringing as much as $1 million to the table….

“On Sept. 29, Adelstein made the biggest bet of his life: risking his well-respected reputation, and possibly his poker career, when he accused rookie player Robbi Jade Lew of cheating in a $269,000 hand against him on Hustler Casino Live…”

Adelstein, 36, hasn’t played poker since. Whereas he once spent much of his time studying optimal strategy, reviewing past hands and appearing on streams from Hustler Casino in Gardena and Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, he is now hyper-focused on conducting his own investigation to prove his case. In a more than four-hour interview from his Manhattan Beach home on Tuesday, Adelstein said he was “extremely confident” that he was the target of a cheating ring involving not just Lew but other players and at least one member of the show’s production crew. Lew, 37, denied the allegation, which she called “defamatory.”

The drama has left Adelstein uncertain when he’ll return to the poker table…. Adelstein says he has been cheated before. When he was 26, he was invited to a home game where he bought in for $100,000…. Adelstein said, he laid out his suspicions about the intricacies of the operation to the host and a business partner, and said he would go public with what happened. “They offered me a deal where they would refund me my money in exchange for my silence,” he said. “And then they paid me in six installments, once a month, for a six-month period.”

The incident, which he relayed on a poker podcast last year, showed Adelstein the darker side of poker and left him cautious.

He never played in a high-stakes home game with strangers again, choosing to exclusively play in casinos, where he reasoned cheating would be less likely. Still, “I’m always looking out for it,” he said. “I’m not the world’s most trusting guy when it comes to poker.”

The article notes how major poker sites were busted 15 years ago for “superuser” accounts with cheating privileges — and a 2019 lawsuit in which dozens of pros sued a player and gambling hall accused of leaking info from the RFID-tagged cards uesd in their livestreams.
“When it comes to stream security and these types of games, as professionals we’re obviously always on the lookout so it doesn’t happen again,” poker player Matt Berkey said of the aftermath. “Garrett’s one of the biggest players who plays on stream, so he himself is more of a potential target.”

“Hustler Casino Live,” the streaming show that hosted the now-infamous Sept. 29 game, also uses RFID playing cards. Since its first show aired in August 2021, it has become the world’s most-watched poker stream, combining the drama of the game with huge amounts of cash, poker’s top players, celebrities and other colorful personalities. “Hustler Casino Live” now has more than 1 million monthly unique viewers and 185,000 subscribers.

The show’s games are streamed five days a week on a delay of one to four hours to prevent information from being passed to players live. But now its stream security has been called into question, with players saying tighter protocols need to be implemented. They’ve raised concerns over the number of employees who had access to the control room where hole cards were being monitored, and a few have said the stream should temporarily shut down while the investigation is ongoing….

“I thought that streamed poker was, at least by comparison to the other options, one of the last safe havens,” Adelstein said. “And at this point, I have so little faith in that….”

“Live at the Bike,” on which Adelstein has played several times, has been hitting him up since Sept. 29 in the hopes that he will join its stream. But he says he’s not in the right headspace for it.

“There’s I guess a world in the next several weeks or months where maybe I’m able to process this and want to play a poker game. But at the moment, that’s not how I feel,” he said.

“I’m not playing poker on a stream again unless I see tangible, noticeable, measurable differences in livestream security,” he continued. “That’s for my own benefit and it’s for the benefit of the poker community at large.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Man Alleging Poker Cheating Demands Better Security in Livestreamed Games