An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: DeepMind today announced a new milestone for its artificial intelligence agents trained to play the Blizzard Entertainment game StarCraft II. The Google-owned AI lab's more sophisticated software, still called AlphaStar, is now grandmaster level in the real-time strategy game, capable of besting 99.8 percent of all human players in competition. The findings are to be published in a research paper in the scientific journal Nature. Not only that, but DeepMind says it also evened the playing field when testing the new and improved AlphaStar against human opponents who opted into online competitions this past summer. For one, it trained AlphaStar to use all three of the game's playable races, adding to the complexity of the game at the upper echelons of pro play. It also limited AlphaStar to only viewing the portion of the map a human would see and restricted the number of mouse clicks it could register to 22 non-duplicated actions every five seconds of play, to align it with standard human movement.

Still, the AI was capable of achieving grandmaster level, the highest possible online competitive ranking, and marks the first ever system to do so in StarCraft II. DeepMind sees the advancement as more proof that general-purpose reinforcement learning, which is the machine learning technique underpinning the training of AlphaStar, may one day be used to train self-learning robots, self-driving cars, and create more advanced image and object recognition systems. "The history of progress in artificial intelligence has been marked by milestone achievements in games. Ever since computers cracked Go, chess and poker, StarCraft has emerged by consensus as the next grand challenge," said David Silver, a DeepMind principle research scientist on the AlphaStar team, in a statement. "The game's complexity is much greater than chess, because players control hundreds of units; more complex than Go, because there are 10^26 possible choices for every move; and players have less information about their opponents than in poker."

ted_pikul writes: Penn State University researchers report in the journal Joule that they've designed an electric battery that can charge an EV for 200 miles in about 10 minutes. The key to their approach is quickly heating the nickel foil-covered battery to a high temperature and more slowly cooling it to ambient temperatures. The researchers report that in addition to the fast charging time, this approach mitigated performance-draining "battery plaque" that can build up on batteries.

Teens are increasingly using the phrase "OK boomer" to fire back at older generations' criticisms. Slashdot reader ItsJustAPseudonym shares an excerpt from an NBC News article: In recent months, the phrase "OK boomer" has become a common retort in the parts of the internet inhabited by teenage and young adult users. On Instagram, the phrase appears as a hashtag alongside memes and artwork mocking the older generation. On Twitter, the phrase is hurled at someone for making an outdated statement. And on TikTok, where it is arguably the most prolific, it appears in artwork, audios and makeup tutorials as a way to mock an older generation, and the hashtag has been viewed on the platform 18 million times. [...] The phrase is a culmination of annoyance and frustration at a generation young people perceive to be worsening issues like climate change, political polarization and economic hardship. The 10 teens and young adults who spoke to NBC News about the phrase said "OK boomer" marked a boiling point for Gen Z and younger millennials, who feel pushed around or condescended to by older generations.

A bug in Apple's App Store removed more than 20 million ratings from apps both big and small. "The issue began on October 23, 2019 and wasn't resolved until yesterday, October 29," reports TechCrunch. "Apple hasn't yet explained how such a sizable and impactful change to app ratings occurred." From the report: This massive ratings drop was spotted by the mobile app insights platform Appfigures. The firm found that more than 300 apps from over 200 developers were affected by the sweep, which wiped out a total of 22 million app reviews from the App Store. On average, apps saw a 50% decrease in ratings in the affected countries, which included the U.S.

The U.S. was hit the hardest, however, as some 10 million ratings disappeared. But the sweep was global in nature, hitting all 155 countries Apple supports. China, the U.K., South Korea, Russia and Australia also felt a noticeable impact. A few apps were hit harder than others. Hulu, for example, lost a whopping 95% of ratings in the U.S., while Dropbox and Chase lost 85%. Several companies affected by the bug declined to comment, but told us that the rating removals weren't done at their request -- they were just as surprised as everyone else. Of the more than 300 apps that got hit, about half (154) saw a drop of more than 100 ratings, Appfigures said. Some of the impacted companies (and Appfigures) confirmed to TechCrunch the missing ratings were restored as of yesterday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A day after Facebook-owned WhatsApp sued NSO Group, the social media platform has permanently deleted the accounts of employees who work at the Israel-based spyware maker, according to message boards and a security researcher who spoke to one worker. "Your account has been deleted for not following our terms," said a message sent to one employee by Facebook-owned Instagram. "You won't be able to log into this account, and no one else will be able to see it. We're unable to restore accounts that are deleted for these types of violations."

A message board popular in Israel indicated that the deletion was widespread. "I had just personally verified it (I have friends working there)," one person wrote. "Ninety-eight percent of the company employees were blocked." Another person who claimed to work at NSO responded to say he or she hadn't been blocked. Another person claiming to be an NSO employee complained bitterly on LinkedIn. An Israel-based security researcher who spoke to an NSO employee said the deletions affected a much smaller percentage of the company's employees and didn't involve WhatsApp accounts.

MojoKid writes: As the "S" in its name implies, the new Intel Core i9-9900KS that launched today is something akin to a Special Edition version of the company's existing Core i9-9900K 8-core CPU. The processors are built from the same slab of silicon -- an 8-core, Coffee Lake-refresh based die and packaged up for Intel's LGA1151 socket. What makes the Core i9-9900KS different from its predecessor are its base and turbo boost clocks, which are rated for 4GHz and 5GHz across all-cores, respectively, with enhanced binning of the chips to meet its performance criteria. The Core i9-9900KS is arguably the fastest processor available right now for single and lightly-threaded workloads, and offers the highest performance in gaming and graphics tests. In more heavily-threaded workloads that can leverage all of the additional processing resources available in a 12-core CPU like the Ryzen 9-3900X, however, the 8-core Intel Core i9-9900KS doesn't fare as well. It did catch AMD's 12-core Threadripper 2920X, which is based on the previous-gen Zen+ architecture, on a couple of occasions, however. Intel's new Core i9-9900KS desktop processor is available starting today at $513 MSRP.

Twitter is planning to ban political ads from its service, the company announced Wednesday via a series of Tweets from its CEO Jack Dorsey. The ban will go into effect November 22. BuzzFeed News reports: Dorsey said the ban will cover ads about specific candidates and issues -- the broadest possible ban. The ban will also be global in nature, and not limited to the US. Some ads will be allowed to remain, including those encouraging people to vote. According to a Twitter spokesperson, news organizations are currently exempt from its rules on political advertising, and the company will release full details on exemptions next month.

In his Twitter thread, Dorsey took a swipe at Facebook's policy, noting that it is not credible to say "We're working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad... well... they can say whatever they want!" He also poked at Facebook's argument that banning tweets will favor incumbents, giving challengers less voice. "Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents," Dorsey said. "But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising. I trust this will only grow."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: An amateur radio rig exposed to the internet and discovered by a security researcher was collecting real-time medical data and health information broadcast by hospitals and ambulances across U.K. towns and cities. The rig, operated out of a house in North London, was picking up radio waves from over the air and translating them into readable text. The hobbyist's computer display was filling up with messages about real-time medical emergencies from across the region. For some reason, the hobbyist had set up an internet-connected webcam pointed at the display. But because there was no password on the webcam, anyone who knew where to look could also see what was on the rig's computer display.

Daley Borda, a security researcher and bug bounty hunter, stumbled upon the exposed webcam. The live stream was grainy, and the quality of the images so poor that it was just possible to make out the text on the display. "You can see details of calls coming in -- their name, address, and injury," he told TechCrunch. TechCrunch verified his findings. Messages spilling across the screen appeared to direct nearby ambulances where to go following calls to the 999 emergency services. One message said a 98-year-old man had fallen at his home address. A few moments later, another message said a 49-year-old male was complaining of chest pains at a nearby residence. One after the other, messages were flooding in, describing accidents, incidents and medical emergencies, often including their home addresses. "The hobbyist was picking up and decoding pager communications from a nearby regional National Health Service trust," adds TechCrunch. These devices remain a fixture in UK hospitals and "allow anyone to send messages to one or many pagers at once by calling a dedicated phone number, often manned by an operator, which are then broadcast as radio waves over the pager network."

While the NHS still uses about 130,000 pagers, according to the UK government, it's not clear how many trusts are exposing medical information -- if at all.

AI is likely to change how every job is performed, eliminating work related to repetitive tasks but increasing the need for creative thinkers, according to a new study. From a report: These findings are contained in a report released this week by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab called "The Future of Work: How New Technologies Are Transforming Tasks." The study found signs that AI is beginning to slowly redefine the nature of tasks performed in certain jobs as automation gains ground. "As new technologies continue to scale within businesses and across industries, it is our responsibility as innovators to understand not only the business process implications, but also the societal impact," said Martin Fleming, vice president and chief economist of IBM, in a statement. "To that end, this empirical research from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab sheds new light on how tasks are reorganizing between people and machines as a result of AI and new technologies."

With the rise of AI and automation, there has been growing debate and anxiety about how these trends will disrupt current job markets. While some have argued AI and automation will be job killers, others have said the emerging technology will be a net creator of new jobs. The IBM-MIT study offers a bit of nuance to that discussion. The researchers used machine learning to analyze 170 million U.S. job postings between 2010 and 2017. They found that out of 18,500 possible tasks employees might be asked to do on average, the number had fallen by 3.7 over seven years. A drop, though hardly radical.

A newly announced project called TruSat uses crowdsourced data to track satellites in an effort to hold companies and nations operating in space accountable. From a report: Space junk is a growing concern for those in the space industry, as companies plan to send thousands of satellites to orbit in the coming years. Having reliable means of tracking those satellites and any space junk created from them will be key to creating a sustainable space economy. Today, governments and other organizations are trying to create standards to help limit the amount of space junk produced in orbit. Instead of relying on information from governments or companies and tracking data from the U.S. Air Force, TruSat will use data collected by people on the ground observing satellites from their own backyards. There is already a vibrant community of people around the world who track satellites with binoculars or cameras from the ground and share that information with one another. Users of TruSat are able to enter tracking information for satellites they observe into the program, where it will be included in a crowdsourced record showing the tracks of satellites in the night sky.

After gaming giant Activision Blizzard banned a pro gamer who expressed support for Hong Kong protesters, the company has taken heat on all sides. Players boycotted Blizzard games. Employees walked out of work. Lawmakers lambasted the company for caving to pressure from China. And Blizzard faced another problem it didn't reveal at the time: a sponsor pulled out of its pro gaming league amid the controversy. From a report: Two days after the company announced that it would ban Hong Kong-based professional Hearthstone player Chung Ng Wai, Mitsubishi Motors Taiwan ended its sponsorship of Blizzard's esports events, according to Erica Rasch, a spokesperson for Mitsubishi.

Google is facing a backlash over an internal tool for the company's Chrome browser that some employees worry is intended for spying on workers organizing protests and discussing workplace issues. From a report: To get around using the tool, some employees have turned to third-party browsers. That's prompted at least one security engineer at Google to voice concern over the possible vulnerabilities that using outside software could bring. The tool is a software extension for Google's Chrome browser, which is installed on all employee computers. It's designed to activate when workers create calendar events that include more than 100 people or use more than 10 rooms. Google said the tool is a pop-up reminder that asks people to "be mindful" before setting up large meetings. But some employees have accused Google management of trying to keep tabs on big gatherings. Google has called those claims "categorically false" and said the purpose of the tool is to cut down on calendar spam. To avoid the extension, employees are encouraging each other to use browsers other than Chrome, a Google security engineer wrote in an internal forum, screenshots of which were reviewed by CNET. Those browsers include Chromium, the open-source browser foundation on which Google Chrome is built, the engineer wrote, adding that people shifting to other browsers "has an impact on overall security of this fleet."

A former Juul executive is alleging in a lawsuit that the fast-growing startup shipped out 1 million contaminated e-cigarette pods earlier this year -- but did not tell customers or issue a recall. From a report: The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Siddharth Breja, a former senior vice president of global finance who worked at the San Francisco-based company from May 2018 to March 2019. In the lawsuit -- filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California on the same day that Juul confirmed its plans to lay off about 500 people -- Breja claims he was retaliated against for raising concerns about the contaminated shipment. In another instance, Breja says he was worried when the company, in February 2019, wanted to resell pods that were at that point almost one year old. He protested their resale and urged the company to at least include an expiration or "best by" date, or a date of manufacture, on the packaging. The lawsuit claims that then-CEO Kevin Burns shot down that idea, saying, "Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods."

Google's Pixel smartphones have always been defined by iPhone-beating cameras, backed by the know-how of its software coders. With the release of the Pixel 4, however, the company has lost its lead -- through a combination of Apple's iPhone 11 camera improvements and its own lack of progress. From a report: Alphabet's Google is selling the Pixel 4 through all four major U.S. wireless carriers for the first time. And it's priced like a premium device: the 5.7-inch Pixel 4 starts at $799 and the 6.3-inch Pixel 4 XL costs $899. That's at least $100 more than the iPhone 11 but without software like iMessage that many Apple users consider a social imperative in the U.S.

With the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro, Apple closed the photography gap with better low-light image quality. Its camera software also makes those photos easier to take by automatically enabling night mode when required. Apple remains way ahead of any other phone maker when it comes to video quality. Deprived of its signature advantage, the Pixel 4 struggles to stand out in a crowded smartphone market. The design -- including materials, proportions and screen bezels -- is utilitarian. When compared with more polished handsets from Apple and Samsung, the Pixel 4 is unremarkable. With a single-digit slice of the smartphone market, Google also lacks the user loyalty and inertia to keep selling without a killer feature.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Xiaomi's November 5 event is shaping up to be a pretty big one. The company has shared many more details about the smartwatch that's about to be unveiled at the event. The Mi Watch, as it'll probably be called, has roughly the same shape as Apple's watch, and a very similar digital crown on the side. Another perspective shows that the Mi Watch will be a bit less rounded and somewhat thicker than Apple's latest Watch 5. Xiaomi went as far to include a picture of the Mi Watch's innards, which show that it will be equipped with Wi-Fi, GPS and NFC chips, as well as an eSIM.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the early days of the mobile phone, Nokia was everywhere -- ubiquitous, inescapable, supreme. It created the best-selling 1100, with a keypad like droplets of water; the gray-blue 3310; even the cutting-edge 8810, with a slip-sliding protective cover that felt like the future. Today, the firm is doing just fine, though its primary money-makers are less obvious than they once were. The Finnish giant now derives most of its income from those invisible elements of the mobile internet that allow you to access an infinite repository of information from almost anywhere in the world: routers, network processors, base station radio access units, and other whizz-bang components. In 2018, with a revenue of $25.5 billion, Nokia dropped to 466th place. The transition from handset juggernaut to invisible technological unguent was not without casualties. Over nine years of downsizing, the company lost its handset business; eliminated thousands of jobs; and saw millions down the drain.

The Finnish town of Oulu, with a present-day population of around 200,000, looked like another certain victim. Formerly a quiet lumber town, it had been buoyed by the rise of Nokia, becoming a regional tech powerhouse in the process. By 2000, the so-called "Oulu miracle" had hit its stride, with more than 15,000 IT jobs in the city. But Nokia's travails became the town's: Between 2009 and 2011, the company cut more than 1,000 Oulu jobs, many of which were related to its handset business. Five years later, another 1,000 positions followed. But contrary to the expectations of local residents and the Finnish media alike, Nokia's tumble did not take the town with it.

At its height, the company had sucked in the city's talent like a whirlpool. Now, that same talent has the opportunity to flourish elsewhere, thanks to structured support and intervention from the local government, entrepreneurs, and Nokia itself. It is still the largest employer in town -- earlier this year, the company's Oulu 5G operation was honored by the World Economic Forum as a world leader in the sector -- but there are now many more options for enterprising tech workers with a yen to stay in the north. Oulu's greatest hits have much greater name recognition than their shared point of origin: 5G. Texting, and then chatting online. Paying for things with your mobile phone. Fitness trackers. All of these inventions, and thousands more like them, were developed, thought up, tested, or launched from this sleepy Nordic spot, some 120 miles south of the Arctic Circle. To this day, the town remains home of the world's most talented engineers, still at work at other things that might someday improve your life: a smart ring that tracks your sleep and fitness, for instance, or directional speakers that push sound only where it is required.

Facebook has agreed to pay a $640,000 fine imposed by the UK's data protection watchdog for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. From a report: It had originally appealed the penalty, causing the Information Commissioner's Office to pursue its own counter-appeal. As part of the agreement, Facebook has made no admission of liability. The US firm said it "wished it had done more to investigate Cambridge Analytica" earlier. James Dipple-Johnstone, deputy commissioner of the ICO said: "The ICO's main concern was that UK citizen data was exposed to a serious risk of harm. Protection of personal information and personal privacy is of fundamental importance, not only for the rights of individuals, but also as we now know, for the preservation of a strong democracy."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A huge cyber-attack has knocked out more than 2,000 websites -- as well as the national TV station -- in the country of Georgia. Court websites containing case materials and personal data have also been attacked. In many cases, website home pages were replaced with an image of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, and the caption "I'll be back." The origin of the attack is not yet known. BBC Caucasus correspondent Rayhan Demytrie said people on social media were speculating that Russia might be behind it. She added that she had been told by cyber-security experts that Georgian government websites were "poorly protected and vulnerable to attack." More than 15,000 pages were affected, including the presidential website, non-government organizations and private companies.

Slashdot readers jimminy_cricket and Thelasko share a report from Popular Mechanics about how San Francisco's Salesforce Transit Center went from the Grand Central of the West to a $2.2 billion construction debacle. Here's an excerpt from the report: Built at a cost of $2.2 billion, the Salesforce Transit Center and Park formed the cornerstone of the Bay Area's ambitious regional transportation plan: a vast, clean, efficient web of trains, buses, and streetcars, running through a hub acclaimed as the Grand Central Station of the West. Naming this structure -- the embodiment of a transformative idea -- could yield marketing gold for Salesforce. It also could make [Marc Benioff, founder and co-CEO of Salesforce] a household name on the level of Bezos, Gates, or Zuckerberg. Benioff took the gamble in 2017, pledging $110 million over 25 years, with $9.1 million up front and the rest committed to supporting operations when the trains started running. For now, the train box sat vacant on the bottom level, awaiting a 1.3-mile tunnel connection. [...] As he took the stage on his birthday at the Moscone Center, Marc Benioff must have been confident his gamble on naming rights had paid off. He couldn't imagine that at that moment, less than a mile away, the ambassadors trained to welcome the public to the STC were now frantically waving commuters away. Rather than Grand Central Station or the High Line, the Salesforce Transit Center and Park suddenly resembled the Titanic.

Earlier that day, workers installing panels in the STC's ceiling beneath the rooftop park uncovered a jagged crack in a steel beam supporting the park and bus deck. "Out of an abundance of caution," officials said, they closed the transit center, rerouting buses to a temporary terminal. Inspectors were summoned. They found a similar fracture in a second beam. Structural steel is exceptionally strong, but given certain conditions -- low temperatures, defects incurred during fabrication, heavy-load stress -- it remains vulnerable to cracking. Two types of cracks occur in steel: ductile fractures, which occur after the steel has yielded and deformed, and brittle fractures, which generally happen before the steel yields. Ductile fractures develop over time, as the steel stretches during use, explains Michael Engelhardt, Ph.D., a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and chair of the peer-review committee overseeing the STC's response to the cracked-beam crisis. The cracks discovered beneath the rooftop park were classic brittle fractures. The tapered 4-inch-thick steel beams -- 2.5 feet wide and 60 feet long, with a horizontal flange on the bottom -- undergirded the 5.4-acre park on the building's fourth level, and buttressed the roof of the bus deck on the second level. By themselves, the cracks formed a point of weakness with potentially hazardous consequences. But they also suggested the possibility of a larger crisis. If two brittle fractures had appeared in the building's 23,000 tons of structural steel, couldn't there be others?

Microbial health company Seed is launching a campaign to collect 100,000 fecal photos to build what developers say is the world's first poop image database. The campaign dares you to "give a shit" for science by uploading photos of your feces so that scientists can use it to train an AI platform launched out of MIT. Developers say that your photos could potentially help the approximately 1 in 5 people in the U.S. who have chronic gut conditions like irritable bowel syndrome. The Verge reports: Here's how citizen scientists can contribute to the cause. To participate, go to seed.com/poop on your phone (because taking your laptop to the loo is weird, and the page doesn't allow you to submit a photo unless you're using your phone). Click on the big purple button that says "#GIVEaSHIT." You'll be prompted to enter your email address and whether you're on a morning, afternoon, or evening poop schedule. Then, if you've already dropped a deuce, you can take or upload your photo or you can ask for an email reminder to be sent to you according to the time you indicated. After you've submitted your stool for posterity, the image is separated from the metadata (your email address and other potentially identifying information) so that your donation can remain anonymous and HIPAA compliant.

A team of doctors will diligently look through every image received. (Yes, that is a real job for seven gastroenterologists who take notes on what they see in the pictures.) Poop can fall into seven categories identified along the Bristol stool scale, which can tell you and your doctor whether you're constipated, lacking fiber, have a serious case of the runs, or somewhere in between. The doctors' insights into your poop will help train artificial intelligence models to understand the same things the doctors see in the image. Similar training systems are used to teach self-driving cars how to identify a tree or a cat in the road, according to David Hachuel, a co-founder of the startup Auggi, which is building the platform.