In a landmark collaboration across 22 labs, neuroscientists have created the first brain-wide map of decision-making in mice, tracking over 620,000 neurons across nearly 280 brain regions. They found that decision-making is distributed much more broadly than previously thought, involving not just “cognitive” centers but also regions linked to movement. From a report: The task was deceptively simple task. Mice sat in front of a screen that intermittently displayed a black-and-white striped circle for a brief amount of time on either the left or right side. A mouse could earn a sip of sugar water if they quickly moved the circle toward the center of the screen by operating a tiny steering wheel in the same direction, often doing so within one second. On some trials, the circle was faint, requiring the animal to rely on past experience to make a guess, which allowed researchers to study how expectations influence future decisions. While the mice performed the task, researchers recorded brain activity using high-density electrodes that allowed them to monitor hundreds of neurons across many regions simultaneously. The work was divided across the participating labs, so that each lab mapped a particular region of the mouse brain. The pooled dataset covers 620,000 neurons recorded from 139 mice in 12 labs, encompassing nearly the entire brain. The resulting map revealed that decision-making activity is distributed across the brain, including in areas traditionally associated with movement rather than cognition. The findings have been published in two papers in the journal Nature.

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An Indiana bankruptcy lawyer named Mark Zuckerberg is suing Meta after his Facebook page was repeatedly shut down for “impersonating” CEO Mark Zuckerberg, despite being his real legal name. TechCrunch reports: Mark Zuckerberg the lawyer uses a commercial Facebook page to advertise his legal practice and communicate with potential clients. But his page has been disabled five times in the last eight years, since Meta’s moderation systems flag his account as falsely impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the platform. Mark Zuckerberg is not impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, because he, too, is Mark Zuckerberg. In his legal complaint, Mark Zuckerberg points out that he has been practicing law since Mark Zuckerberg was just three years old.

“It’s not funny,” Mark Zuckerberg, the lawyer, said to Indianapolis’ 13WTHR. “Not when they take my money. This really pissed me off.” Mark Zuckerberg has spent over $11,000 to advertise his page on Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta platforms, but when Mark Zuckerberg’s account is disabled for allegedly impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg still has to pay for these advertisements. Zuckerberg created a website, iammarkzuckerberg.com, chronicling how his life has been shaped by being named Mark Zuckerberg.

The lawsuit can be found here.

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Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a major copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, accusing the AI image generator of exploiting its movies and TV shows to train models and generate near-identical reproductions of iconic characters like Batman, Bugs Bunny, and Rick and Morty. From The Hollywood Reporter: The company “brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property” by letting subscribers produce images and videos of iconic copyrighted characters, alleges the complaint, filed on Thursday in California federal court. “The heart of what we do is develop stories and characters to entertain our audiences, bringing to life the vision and passion of our creative partners,” said a Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson in a statement. “Midjourney is blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works, and we filed this suit to protect our content, our partners, and our investments.”

For years, AI companies have been training their technology on data scraped across the internet without compensating creators. It’s led to lawsuits from authors, record labels, news organizations, artists and studios, which contend that some AI tools erode demand for their content. Warner Bros. Discovery joins Disney and Universal, which earlier this year teamed up to sue Midjourney. By their thinking, the AI company is a free-rider plagiarizing their movies and TV shows. In the lawsuit, Warner Bros. Discovery points to Midjourney generating images of iconic copyrighted characters. At the forefront are heroes who’re at the center of DC Studios’ movies and TV shows, like Superman, Wonder Woman and The Joker; others are Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo characters who’ve become ubiquitous household names; more are Cartoon Network characters, including those from Rick and Morty, who’ve emerged as something of cultural touchstones in recent years. […]

The lawsuit argues Midjourney’s ability to return copyrighted characters is a “clear draw for subscribers,” diverting consumers away from purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery-approved posters, wall art and prints, among other products that must now compete against the service. […] Warner Bros. Discovery seeks Midjourney’s profits attributable to the alleged infringement or, alternatively, $150,000 per infringed work, which could leave the AI company on the hook for massive damages. The thrust of the studios’ lawsuits will likely be decided by one question: Are AI companies covered by fair use, the legal doctrine in intellectual property law that allows creators to build upon copyrighted works without a license? The lawsuit can be found here.

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Meta currently has lots of priorities Mark Zuckerberg likely never would have imagined back in the early days of Facebook. The company has pivoted from social networking to the metaverse and, most recently, to AI. But somehow, one of its earliest — and most useless — features has not only survived but is apparently getting a revamp. I’m talking, of course, about the poke, which Meta is once again trying to revive. 

The company is making the storied feature easier to find by adding pokes back to user profiles in the Facebook app, according to a post it shared on Instagram. And you can track all poking-related activity between you and your friends at facebook.com/pokes. It even looks like there’s a Snapchat-streak like aspect where different emojis appear based on how many pokes have been exchanged. 

Just in case you weren’t on Facebook two decades ago, “poking” was something of a novelty in the early days of the social network. At the time, there weren’t that many features for interacting with your friends. You could leave comments on their profile and … you could “poke.” The feature never really did anything, but depending on who it came from it was considered something between creepy or flirty.  As Meta notes in its Instagram post, poking never really went away, but it was de-emphasized over the years and has been largely forgotten by users.

But the company has for some reason been trying to get poking to make a comeback for a while now. Meta said last year the feature was “having a moment” and that there had been a 13x spike in pokes after the company began surfacing the feature in the Facebook search bar. Now, it seems Meta is trying to build even more momentum for it, presumably for the current generation of younger Facebook users. 

Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year he wants to bring back more “OG” Facebook features like… being able to find content posted by your actual friends. And it’s hard to get more “OG Facebook” than poking. Meta has also been on a years-long mission to win over “young adults,”  so it might see the jokey feature as a way to appeal to a generation used to taking their Snap streak extremely seriously. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/21-years-later-meta-still-hasnt-given-up-on-the-facebook-poke-000446458.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: According to a new medical survey, scrolling on your smartphone while using the toilet may dramatically increase your risk of hemorrhoids. The evidence is laid out in a study published on September 3 in the journal PLOS One. […] Over the past 20 years, one single device has unequivocally lengthened the amount of time most people spend sitting. “We’re still uncovering the many ways smartphones and our modern way of life impact our health,” Harvard Medical School gastroenterologist and study co-author Trisha Pasricha said in a statement. “It’s possible that how and where we use them — such as while in the bathroom — can have unintended consequences.”

To test this theory, Pasricha and colleagues oversaw a study of 125 adults who recently received a colonoscopy screening. The patients were surveyed on both their daily lifestyles and toilet traditions, while endoscopists subsequently evaluated them for hemorrhoids. Of those volunteers, 66 percent reported passing time in the bathroom while smartphone scrolling. After factoring in potential hemorrhoid influences like age, exercise habits, and fiber intake, the researchers determined that those who relied on this screentime had a 46 percent higher risk of hemorrhoid problems than non-users. “It’s incredibly easy to lose track of time when we’re scrolling on our smartphones — popular apps are designed entirely for that purpose,” added Pasricha.

The survey’s results made this abundantly clear: 37 percent of smartphone users spent over five minutes at a time on the toilet, while barely seven percent of non-users reported the same. In general, people opted for reading the news and checking their social media while in the bathroom. […] Pasricha cautioned against drawing any definitive conclusions just yet, noting the preliminary study’s comparatively small sample size. The team intends to investigate the issue further, possibly by tracking patients over longer periods of time, while also experimenting with ways to limit smartphone use. “We need to study this further, but it’s a safe suggestion to leave the smartphone outside the bathroom when you need to have a bowel movement,” said Pasricha. “If it’s taking longer, ask yourself why. Was it because having a bowel movement was really so difficult, or was it because my focus was elsewhere?”

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Intel shelled out $16.5 billion on R&D in 2024, outspending Nvidia by 28% and AMD by 156%, with much of the cash going into chip design, fabrication tech, and the upcoming Nova Lake architecture. “When you compare the R&D expenditures to the amount of revenue, though, the story takes on a very different look,” notes PC Gamer. “Intel spent 31% of its net revenue, and 26% for AMD, but Nvidia and Samsung got by on just 10% and 4%, respectively.” From the report: An analysis of research and development expenditure by TechInsights was reported by Korea JoongAng Daily, but you can get the numbers yourself by pulling up each company’s 2024 financial results. For example, AMD declared that it spent $6.456 billion last year (pdf, page 1) on R&D, whereas Nvidia forked out $12.914 billion. It’s worth noting that Nvidia’s financial statements are numbered one year ahead of the actual period (FY 2026 is 2025 and so on).

Anyway, those figures pale in comparison to how much cash Intel burned through in 2024 to research and develop chip, fabrication technologies, software, and all kinds of tech stuffâ”a staggering $16.546 billion (pdf, page 25). That’s 28% more than Nvidia and a frankly unbelievable 156% more than AMD. The nearest non-US semiconductor firm is Samsung Electronics, which spent a reported $9.5 billion on R&D. That would place third, comfortably ahead of AMD, and it strongly suggests that if you have your own foundries for making chips, you need to spend a lot of cash on finding ways to make better processors.

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US health secretary and ardent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday amid turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and widespread chaos over access to COVID-19 vaccines.

In the combative three-hour hearing, Kennedy defended his dramatic firing of the CDC director last week, less than a month after her confirmation, which he effusively supported. Today, he repeatedly called her a liar and made the extraordinary claim that she openly confessed to him that she cannot be trusted. Kennedy went on to reiterate the dangerous claim that the CDC is corrupt. That’s despite calls from agency staff for Kennedy to tone down such rhetoric after a gunman—who was influenced by vaccine misinformation and the vilification of the public health agency—sprayed the CDC campus with over 500 rounds and killed a local police officer last month.

Regarding vaccines, particularly COVID-19 vaccines, Kennedy made his usual anti-vaccine talking points. He gave the tired refrain that all the medical, pediatrics, infectious disease, and public health experts who disagree with his views and support existing vaccines do so simply because they have been bought off by the pharmaceutical industry. He repeatedly falsely claimed that his actions as secretary have not restricted access to COVID-19 vaccines, despite the fact that he directly restricted access to COVID-19 vaccines. People, including cancer patients, are currently being denied access to the vaccines in multiple states due to the restrictions.

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This is a video of a custom car that looks like a truck towing a trailer that’s driving in reverse. It’s not though, the trailer is actually the driving vehicle and it’s all a clever trick. It took me three views to understand what I was watching, but I got to the bottom of it! Call me, Scooby and the gang, my schedule is wide open for sleuthing. But, FULL DISCLOSURE: I am afraid of ghosts, monsters, and old men pretending to be ghosts or monsters though.

Philips Hue is rolling out MotionAware, a new feature that turns its smart bulbs into motion sensors using radio-frequency (RF) Zigbee signals. The upgrade works with most Hue bulbs made since 2014, but requires the new $99 Bridge Pro hub to enable. The Verge reports: To create a MotionAware motion-sensing zone, you need Hue’s new Bridge Pro and at least three Hue devices in a room. It works with all new and most existing mains-powered Hue products via a firmware update. That includes smart bulbs, light strips, and fixtures. Portable devices, such as the Hue Go or Table Lamp, and battery-powered accessories, such as Hue switches, aren’t compatible. Neither is Hue’s current smart plug. […] “All of the functionality you get with our physical motion sensors — including turning on when motion is detected or off when there’s been no movement for a certain amount of time — can be configured on motion-aware motion events,” says George Yianni, Hue CTO and founder, in an interview with The Verge. “We’ve done something that’s quite a lot better than what else is out there.”

MotionAware is occupancy sensing, not presence sensing; it requires movement. Yianni says it’s comparable to the passive infrared sensing (PIR) Hue’s physical sensors use. This means it can be triggered by pets or other motion. A sensitivity slider in the app helps fine-tune detection. According to Yianni, a key benefit over PIR is that a MotionAware zone can cover a larger area than a single PIR sensor, and it’s also not limited to line of sight. MotionAware can’t sense light levels, which Hue Motion Sensors can, but you can pair a light sensor to a motion zone to feed it that data. The positioning of the lights will also play a role in determining the effectiveness of the motion sensing. “We recommend that the lights surround an area which will roughly define the detection area in which motion will be detected,” says Yianni. “It will sense around the lights and in the broader room thanks to reflections, but detection reliability will depend on lots of factors.”

Beyond lighting automation, MotionAware can also integrate with Hue Secure, Hue’s DIY security platform that includes cameras, contact sensors, and a new video doorbell. Motion detection can trigger lights to flash red, activate Hue’s new plug-in chime/siren, and send an alert to your phone with a button to call emergency services. […] MotionAware is built on RF sensing — a technology that uses wireless signals to “see” a space and detect disruptions within it. The data is then sent to the Bridge Pro, where AI algorithms are applied to figure out what is causing those disruptions, so the system can act accordingly. This is why it’s limited to the Bridge Pro, the V2 bridge isn’t powerful enough to run those algorithms, says Yianni.

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Wednesday’s discovery of three mis-issued TLS certificates for Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 encrypted DNS lookup service generated intense interest and concern among Internet security practitioners. The revelation raised the possibility that an unknown entity had obtained the cryptographic equivalent of a skeleton key that could be used to surreptitiously decrypt millions of users’ DNS queries that were encrypted through DNS over TLS or DNS over HTTPS. From there, the scammers could have read queries or even tampered with results to send 1.1.1.1 users to malicious sites.

Since then, new information and analysis have become available, including the issuance of nine additional certificates since February 2024. This FAQ list is designed to answer questions raised in comments to the story and to provide the latest on what’s known about the incident, which Cloudflare said Thursday constituted an “unacceptable lapse in security by Fina CA,” the Microsoft-trusted certificate authority (CA) responsible for all 12 of the mis-issued certificates.

You asked; we answer

Has new information come to light since Wednesday morning?

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The new Street Fighter movie has been given a release date of October 16, 2026. Kitao Sakurai is directing the project and a few generic plot details have been disclosed. The story will be set in 1993, a nod to the year Street Fighter II was released in arcades, and will have familiar characters from the game uncovering “a deadly conspiracy” in the midst of all their street fighting.

It seems safe to expect a fair bit of camp in a Street Fighter project, and that bears out in some of the casting. Andrew Koji will play Ryu; he’s had several past action roles such as Bullet Train and TV series Warrior, so that feels like a solid choice. Noah Centineo is taking a break from his work in Netflix rom-coms (notably To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and its sequels) to play Ken. Newcomer Callina Liang, who only has a few credits to date, will play Chun-li. David Dastmalchian will be filling the great Raul Julia’s shoes (and oversized hat) as M. Bison.

Then things really get wacky. Curtis Jackson (who you know as rapper 50 Cent) is playing Balrog and country artist Orville Peck is Vega. Jason Momoa has been cast as Blanka, while WWE wrestler Cody Rhodes has even been chosen to play Guile. This could be absolute gold or absolute trash or possibly both at the same time.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-new-street-fighter-movie-lands-in-theaters-next-october-222724911.html?src=rss

Firaxis, longtime developer of the strategy series Civilization, is laying off an undisclosed number of staff, Game Developer reports. The studio’s publisher and owner 2K confirmed that the layoffs were happening as Firaxis “restructures and optimizes” for “adaptability, collaboration, and creativity.” The layoffs follow turmoil at another 2K studio, Cloud Chamber, which is supposed to be developing the next Bioshock game. 

Since the restructuring has yet to be publicly disclosed, it’s hard to say with absolute certainty how many people have been impacted. Some former staff who worked on Civilization VII and Marvel’s Midnight Sons have already shared that they were laid off social media. Game Developer’s source claims “dozens of workers” were caught up in the cuts.

Engadget has contacted 2K for details about the layoffs and will update this article if we hear back.

The layoffs are surprising only because Take-Two Interactive, Firaxis and 2K’s parent company, was still expecting financial growth for the back half of 2025. Despite delaying its hotly anticipated cash cow Grand Theft Auto VI, Take-Two shared in March that it expected five percent growth in revenue and net bookings for the rest of the year, according to Game Developer. While that might suggest jobs should be safe, layoffs are increasingly a feature of game companies’ normal business strategies. A game could be a failure or a success, but either way it seems to lead to layoffs.

Firaxis’ latest game, Civilization VII, was released in February 2025. The game features a new approach to the series’ turn-based gameplay, letting players mix and match world leaders and civilizations to their strategic benefit. While it wasn’t released to universal acclaim, Firaxis has continued to update Civilization VII since its release with new content and software fixes.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/civilization-developer-firaxis-is-laying-off-staff-221105604.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Managers and supervisors brace yourselves: calling the boss a dickhead is not necessarily a sackable offense, a tribunal has ruled. The ruling came in the case of an office manager who was sacked on the spot when — during a row — she called her manager and another director dickheads. Kerrie Herbert has been awarded almost 30,000 pounds in compensation and legal costs after an employment tribunal found she had been unfairly dismissed.

The employment judge Sonia Boyes ruled that the scaffolding and brickwork company she worked for had not “acted reasonably in all the circumstances in treating [her] conduct as a sufficient reason to dismiss her.” “She made a one-off comment to her line manager about him and a director of the business,” Boyes said. “The comment was made during a heated meeting. “Whilst her comment was not acceptable, there is no suggestion that she had made such comments previously. Further … this one-off comment did not amount to gross misconduct or misconduct so serious to justify summary dismissal.” […]

Boyes found that Herbert was summarily fired because of her use of the word “dickheads” and ruled that the company had failed to follow proper disciplinary procedures. She concluded that calling her bosses dickheads was not sufficient to fire Herbert and ordered the firm to pay 15,042.81 pounds in compensation. In her latest judgment she also ruled it had to pay 14,087 pounds towards her legal fees. “If it was anyone else in this position they would have walked years ago due to the goings-on in the office, but it is only because of you two dickheads that I stayed,” said Herbert.

Swannell retorted: “Don’t call me a fucking dickhead or my wife. That’s it, you’re sacked. Pack your kit and fuck off.”

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Presumably tipped off that my grandma always sends my Christmas money early, LEGO has just announced its largest and most expensive set to date: the Star Wars Death Star. The set contains 9,023 pieces (including 33 minifigs), and measures 32″ wide, 28″ tall, and 11″ deep. It will release October 4th and features a cross section of everyone’s favorite non-moon to recreate scenes from Return Of The Jedi, my favorite of which is the trash compactor scene.Per Han Solo, “One thing’s for sure. We’re all gonna be a lot thinner!” Haha, my old doctor says I should be thinner too. Dude’s got a belly like Santa Claus! I told him maybe he should lead by example and that’s when he referred me to a doctor for troublesome patients, who turned out to be a vet. I’ve been happy with him for years now.