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Chinese Startup Mobike Lost More Than 200,000 Bikes in 2019 Published on January 01, 2020 at 01:00PM Chinese startup Mobike has announced that it lost more than 200,000 bikes in 2019. From a report: The company said in a blog that 205,600 "dockless" bikes were lost to theft and vandalism. In 2018, it pulled out of Manchester after a series of incidents. Shared dockless bikes, which are hired via an app, have become commonplace in cities worldwide over the last few years. Companies like Uber, Lime and Ofo have all put shared bikes on city streets, as have some local councils. In China, thousands of shared bikes have ended up in huge scrapheaps, leading to questions about whether there is demand for them. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Proposes AI That Improves When You Smile Published on January 01, 2020 at 11:16AM Positive affectivity, or the characteristic that describes how people experience affects (e.g., sensations, emotions, and sentiments) and interact with others as a result, has been linked to increased interest and curiosity as well as satisfaction in learning. Inspired by this, a team of Microsoft researchers propose imbuing reinforcement learning, an AI training technique that employs rewards to spur systems toward goals, with positive affect, which they assert might drive exploration useful in gathering experiences critical to learning. From a report: As the researchers explain, reinforcement learning is commonly implemented via policy-specific rewards designed for a predefined goal. Problematically, these extrinsic rewards are narrow in scope and can be difficult to define, as opposed to intrinsic rewards that are task-independent and quickly indicate success or failure. In pursuit of an in...

Ubisoft Uses AI To Teach a Car To Drive Itself in a Racing Game Published on January 01, 2020 at 08:30AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Reinforcement learning, an AI training technique that employs rewards to drive software policies toward goals, has been applied successfully to domains from industrial robotics to drug discovery. But while firms including OpenAI and Alphabet's DeepMind have investigated its efficacy in video games like Dota 2, Quake III Arena, and StarCraft 2, few to date have studied its use under constraints like those encountered in the game industry. That's presumably why Ubisoft La Forge, game developer Ubisoft's eponymous prototyping space, proposed in a recent paper an algorithm that's able to handle discrete, continuous video game actions in a "principled" and predictable way. They set it loose on a "commercial game" (likely The Crew or The Crew 2, though neither is explicitly mentioned) and report that it's compe...

How the On-Demand Economy Reshaped Cities Published on January 01, 2020 at 07:15AM Since 2010, a slew of on-demand companies and technologies have managed to use consumer data to transform the commercial significance of urban living. From a report: Historically, one of the great economic benefits of urban life is having access to jobs, schooling, goods, and services without needing to travel very far. But digital platforms that aggregate consumer demand are making physical density less important. Uber and Airbnb, the killer apps of the 2010s, exemplify this change. Once upon a time, visitors needed to flock to quarters where a city's supply of hotel accommodations and other tourist amenities were physically consolidated, usually downtown. If you needed a ride, you used to call the taxi company directly, or flag down one of the cabs that served that area. Now we transmit our demands for trips and beds as data from wherever we are, rather than direct interactions that depend on phy...

IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not To Compete With TurboTax Published on January 01, 2020 at 06:30AM Finding free online tax filing should be easier this year for millions of Americans. From a report: The IRS announced significant changes Monday to its deal with the tax prep software industry. Now companies are barred from hiding their free products from search engines such as Google, and a years-old prohibition on the IRS creating its own online filing system has been scrapped. The addendum to the deal, known as Free File, comes after ProPublica's reporting this year on how the industry, led by TurboTax maker Intuit, has long misled taxpayers who are eligible to file for free into paying. Under the nearly two-decade-old Free File deal, the industry agreed to make free versions of tax filing software available to lower- and middle-income Americans. In exchange, the IRS promised not to compete with the industry by creating its own online filing system. Many develop...

Trump Signs Traced Act Into Law in Bid To Help Put an End To Robocalls Published on January 01, 2020 at 05:52AM The fight against annoying robocalls just got another boost. This week President Trump signed the Traced Act into law, giving government agencies and law enforcement officials more weapons to go after individuals and companies who break telephone consumer-protection laws. From a report: The bi-partisan legislation was previously approved by the House and Senate, respectively, earlier this month before arriving on the president's desk. Crafted by Sens. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, and Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, among the act's features are an increase in penalties for those scammers who knowingly initiate illegal robocalls and the requirement that phone companies authenticate calls to determine if the number calling you is real. As part of a Federal Communications Commission push, major wireless carriers and home phone providers have bee...

Fox News Breaking News Alert Up to 4,000 US troops could deploy to Middle East amid Baghdad unrest, officials say 12/31/19 3:17 PM

Sonos Gives a Lame Reason For Bricking Older Devices in 'Recycle Mode' Published on January 01, 2020 Sonos has a good reputation for building quality speakers, but its latest move has disappointed some buyers, reports Engadget. From a report: Recently, the company offered a trade-up program, giving legacy customers 30 percent off the latest One, Beam or Port. In exchange, buyers just had to "recycle" their existing products. However, what Sonos meant by "recycle" was to activate a feature called "Recycle Mode" that permanently bricks the speaker. It then becomes impossible for recycling firms to resell it or do anything else but strip it for parts. Sonos suggests that after bricking the device in Recycle Mode, users drop it off at a recycling facility or give it to Sonos to do the same. However, those facilities are unable to resell the products, which could bring around $200 to $250 in good condition. The problem was brought home by Twitter user...

Filled with almost 3,600 pounds of valuable scientific experiments and other cargo, a SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft is set to leave the International Space Station Sunday, Jan. 5. NASA Television and the agency’s website will broadcast its departure live beginning at 9:15 p.m. EST. December 31, 2019 from NASA https://ift.tt/2FbkD7y

Major US Companies Breached, Robbed, and Spied on by Chinese Hackers Published on December 31, 2019 at 11:00PM Rob Barry and Dustin Volz, reporting for Wall Street Journal: The hackers seemed to be everywhere. In one of the largest-ever corporate espionage efforts, cyberattackers alleged to be working for China's intelligence services stole volumes of intellectual property, security clearance details and other records from scores of companies over the past several years. They got access to systems with prospecting secrets for mining company Rio Tinto, and sensitive medical research for electronics and health-care giant Philips NV. They came in through cloud service providers, where companies thought their data was safely stored. Once they got in, they could freely and anonymously hop from client to client, and defied investigators' attempts to kick them out for years. Cybersecurity investigators first identified aspects of the hack, called Cloud Hopper by the security researc...

NGC 4258, a galaxy about 23 million light years away, is the site of impressive, ongoing fireworks. via NASA https://ift.tt/36jMD4U

3D TV Tells You Everything About This Decade's Tech Published on December 31, 2019 at 10:00PM You don't need special glasses to see what it looks like when smart people run out of ideas. From a column: The breakout hit of the Consumer Electronics Show in 2010 was a television set. Hard to believe now, maybe, but it's true; for one shining moment, the Toshiba Cell TV was the most exciting new thing in tech. Its name invoked the overkill processors inside. It was one of the first sets to promise "Net TV Channels" that would let you stream directly from Netflix or Pandora. And it could show pictures in three dimensions. [...] Five years later, 3D TV was dead. You probably haven't thought about it since then, if you even did before. But there's maybe no better totem for the last decade of consumer technology. It's what happens when smart people run out of ideas, the last gasp before aspiration gives way to commoditization. It was the dawn of all-internet...

NASA researchers will present new findings on a wide range of astrophysics and other space science topics at the 235th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Saturday, Jan. 4, through Wednesday, Jan. 8, in Honolulu. December 31, 2019 from NASA https://ift.tt/39vql1K

Fireworks, Long a German New Year's Eve Tradition, Are Losing Their Luster Published on December 31, 2019 at 09:03PM Fireworks have long been a staple of New Year's Eve celebrations in Germany, with revelers setting off their own pyrotechnics in the annual reverie of booze and exuberance known in the country as "Silvester." But for the first time this year, Berlin will join dozens of other German cities and communities in instituting a partial ban on private fireworks, with three zones in the capital designated fireworks free on New Year's Eve. From a report: Most official and private fireworks displays will continue as normal -- including the spectacular show at Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate -- and skies over much of the country will still be alight, saturated with the sound of millions of tiny explosions. But as the decade comes to a close, Germany's commitment to one of its most enduring New Year's Eve traditions seems to be wavering. The reaso...

US Retailers Rush To Comply With California Privacy Law Published on December 31, 2019 at 07:30PM U.S. retailers including Walmart will add "Do Not Sell My Info" links to their websites and signage in stores starting Jan. 1, allowing California shoppers to understand for the first time what personal and other data the retailers collect, Reuters reported Tuesday citing sources. From the report: Others like Home Depot will allow shoppers not just in California but around the country to access such information online. At its California stores, Home Depot will add signs, offer QR codes so shoppers can look up information using their mobile devices and train store employees to answer questions. Large U.S retailers are rushing to comply with a new law, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which becomes effective at the start of 2020 and is one of the most significant regulations overseeing the data collection practices of U.S. companies. It lets shoppers opt out of allowin...

(NEW YORK) — An anti-robocalls measure signed into law Monday by President Donald Trump should help reduce the torrent of unwanted calls promising lower interest rates or pretending to be the IRS, though it won’t make all such calls disappear. The new law gives authorities more enforcement powers and could speed up measures the industry is already taking to identify robocalls. And when phone companies block robocalls, they must do so without charging consumers. This should help Americans dodge many of these annoying calls. “American families deserve control over their communications, and this legislation will update our laws and regulations to stiffen penalties, increase transparency, and enhance government collaboration to stop unwanted solicitation,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said. The law is a “big victory,” said Consumer Reports’ Maureen Mahoney. “The key is requiring these phone companies to help stop the calls before they reach the consumer and ...

Fox News Breaking News Alert Trump blames Iran for US Embassy attack in Iraq, vows to hold regime ‘fully responsible’ 12/31/19 4:32 AM

Amazon is Opening the Largest Family Shelter in Washington State Right Inside Its Headquarters Published on December 31, 2019 at 05:50PM Amazon is building a homeless shelter on its Seattle campus. From a report: The proposed shelter, which is being co-created by nonprofit Mary's Place, will live in Amazon's Seattle headquarters and is set to open sometime in the first quarter of 2020. The new shelter will have the capacity to serve approximately 275 people each night. This is only about two percent of the estimated 12,500 homeless people in King County, where Seattle is located. While this is certainly a minor fix overall, the size of the new space will actually make it the largest family shelter in Washington state. The shelter is also expected to make upwards of 600,000 meals per year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Syd Mead, Visionary 'Blade Runner' Artist and Futurist, Dies at 86 Published on December 31, 2019 at 04:59PM sandbagger writes: Visual artist and futurist Syd Mead, who helped shape the look of influential sci-fi films including "Blade Runner," "Tron," "Aliens" and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," died Monday of complications from lymphoma in Pasadena, Calif. He was 86. Mead was set to receive the Art Directors Guild's William Cameron Menzies Award during the Guild's 24th Annual awards in February for his contributions on "Aliens," "Blade Runner" and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fox News Breaking News Alert Dozens break into US Embassy compound in Baghdad, AP reports 12/31/19 2:12 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert Crowd attempts to storm US Embassy in Baghdad, report says 12/31/19 1:20 AM

ProtonMail Takes Aim at Google With an Encrypted Calendar Published on December 31, 2019 at 11:00AM Encrypted email provider ProtonMail has officially launched its new calendar in public beta. The move is part of the Swiss company's broader push to offer privacy-focused alternatives to Google's key products. From a report: ProtonMail has been talking about its plans to launch an encrypted calendar for a while. But starting from today, all ProtonMail users on a paid plan will be able to access ProtonCalendar, and it will be opened to everyone when it exits beta in 2020. "Our goal is to create and make widely accessible online products [that] serve users instead of exploiting them," said ProtonMail CEO Andy Yen. ProtonMail hasn't set out to reinvent the wheel in terms of the features and format of ProtonCalendar. It sports a clean interface with views by month and day, color-coded event types, and so on. It is also tied to a user's ProtonMail email account. ...

Huawei's Revenue Hits Record $122B in 2019 Despite U.S. Sanctions Published on December 31, 2019 at 08:40AM Huawei reported resilient revenue for 2019 on Tuesday as the embattled Chinese technology group continues to grow despite prolonged American campaign against its business, but cautioned that growth next year could prove more challenging. From a report: Eric Xu, Huawei's rotating chairman, wrote in a New Year's message to employees that the company's revenue has topped 850 billion Chinese yuan ($122 billion) this year, a new record high for the Chinese group and an 18% increase over the previous year. Xu said Huawei, the second largest smartphone maker globally, sold 240 million handsets this year, up from 206 million last year. "These figures are lower than our initial projections, yet business remains solid and we stand strong in the face of adversity," he wrote. He acknowledged that Huawei is confronting a "strategic and long-term" campaign...

Microsoft Takes Down 50 Domains Operated by North Korean Hackers Published on December 31, 2019 at 07:36AM Microsoft announced today that it successfully took down 50 web domains previously used by a North Korean government-backed hacking group. From a report: The OS maker said the 50 domains were used to launch cyberattacks by a group the company has been tracking as Thallium (also known as APT37). Microsoft said the Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) teams have been monitoring Thallium for months, tracking the group's activities, and mapping its infrastructure. On December 18, the Redmond-based company filed a lawsuit against Thallium in a Virginia court. Shortly after Christmas, US authorities granted Microsoft a court order, allowing the tech company to take over 50 domains that the North Korean hackers have been using as part of their attacks. The domains were used to send phishing emails and host phishing pages. Read more of th...