Microsoft is getting ready to release an important software development kit (SDK) that will allow game developers to integrate Xbox Live into any titles that run across PC, Xbox, iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch. From a report: A Microsoft session at the upcoming Game Developers Conference mentions that Xbox Live will soon have a cross-platform developer kit that integrates the service into Android, iOS and Switch games. You'd have your achievements, clubs, friends list and "more" while on the move, and could pick up on some experiences where you left off. The session will provide a "first look" at the kit. You shouldn't expect titles to support Xbox Live for a while, even if the software toolbox is complete by the time GDC starts.

Google today rolled out Instant Tethering to third-party Chromebooks. Fifteen additional Chromebook models and over 30 cell phone models now support the feature. The move is part of Google's strategy of bringing Chrome OS and Android closer together. From a report: Tethering requires switching on your hotspot that uses your phone's mobile data, connecting to it from your other device by entering the password, and disconnecting when you're done. Instant Tethering skips those steps by putting you through an initial set-up process and then just showing a notification with a Connect button when your Chromebook detects that it has no Wi-Fi access. As long as tethering is enabled on your mobile data plan, and you have the data to spare, your Chromebook can always be online. Instant Tethering will also automatically disconnect if it detects 10 minutes of no activity.

At least 14 UK police forces have made use of crime-prediction software or plan to do so, according to Liberty. From a report: The human rights group said [PDF] it had sent a total of 90 Freedom of Information requests out last year to discover which forces used the technology. It believes the programs involved can lead to biased policing strategies that unfairly focus on ethnic minorities and lower-income communities. And it said there had been a "severe lack of transparency" about the matter. Defenders of the technology say it can provide new insights into gun and knife crime, sex trafficking and other potentially life-threatening offences at a time when police budgets are under pressure.

A federal appeals court has overturned Ajit Pai's attempt to take broadband subsidies away from tribal residents. From a report: The Pai-led Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in November 2017 to make it much harder for tribal residents to obtain a $25-per-month Lifeline subsidy that reduces the cost of Internet or phone service. The change didn't take effect because in August 2018, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed the FCC decision pending appeal. The same court followed that up on Friday last week with a ruling that reversed the FCC decision and remanded the matter back to the commission for a new rule-making proceeding. [...] The Pai FCC's 2017 decision would have limited the $25 subsidy to "facilities-based" carriers -- those that build their own networks -- making it impossible for tribal residents to use the $25 subsidy to buy telecom service from resellers. The move would have dramatically limited tribal residents' options for purchasing subsidized service, but the FCC claimed it was necessary in order to encourage carriers to build their own networks.

An anonymous reader shares a report: By 2050 there will be 9 billion carbon-burning, plastic-polluting, calorie-consuming people on the planet. By 2100, that number will balloon to 11 billion, pushing society into a Soylent Green scenario. Such dire population predictions aren't the stuff of sci-fi; those numbers come from one of the most trusted world authorities, the United Nations. But what if they're wrong? Not like, off by a rounding error, but like totally, completely goofed?

That's the conclusion Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrel Bricker come to in their newest book, Empty Planet, due out February 5th. After painstakingly breaking down the numbers for themselves, the pair arrived at a drastically different prediction for the future of the human species. "In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline," they write. "Once that decline begins, it will never end." But Empty Planet is not a book about statistics so much as it is about what's driving the choices people are making during the fastest period of change in human history.

Google wants to make Android phones powerful tools for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. From a report: On Monday, the search giant released two new services, Live Transcribe and Sound Amplifier, aimed at helping people who have trouble hearing communicate more easily. Live Transcribe does exactly what its name suggests -- it uses your phone's mic to automatically generate captions that appear on your screen. With Sound Amplifier, you can use your phone and a set of headphones to improve the clarity of the speech around you. To develop the new products, Google said it worked with Gallaudet University, the private school in Washington, DC for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

The UK's CO2 emissions peaked in the year 1973 and have declined by around 38% since 1990, faster than any other major developed country. From a report: The most significant factors include a cleaner electricity mix based on gas and renewables instead of coal, as well as falling demand for energy across homes, businesses and industry. Declines in the UK's CO2 have persisted despite an economic recovery from the financial crisis a decade ago. Where earlier reductions were largely negated by rising imports, the past decade has seen genuine cuts in the amount of CO2 for which the UK is responsible. The factors driving emission reductions will likely continue into the future as the UK's remaining coal use is phased out by 2025.

It might look dangerous, but flames have kept switches moving and rails intact for a century. From a report: As if the horrors of the polar vortex were not already enough -- temperatures that look like typos, Canada Goose robbers, and something called frost quakes -- the nation's railroad system took a turn for the apocalyptic this week, too. Rails broke in three different places between Baltimore and Washington on Thursday, causing severe delays. Amtrak canceled dozens of trains passing through Chicago, and viral videos appeared to show commuter tracks in the city on fire. Of course, the tracks themselves were not burning -- they are made out of steel, prized for its tendency to rarely go up in flames. But the sight is still dramatic. The videos of the fires in Chicago last week show flames smoldering in patches of melted snow around the tracks.

Fires have been employed on railroads -- and remained the preferred fix for many a winter hazard -- for most of their roughly two-century history. While railroads have developed impressive tools for dealing with snow on the tracks, extreme temperatures remain a challenge. Though steel is flame-resistant, it's subject to cold, which can jam up railroads' many moving parts. When cold weather does wreak havoc on railroads, lighting fires on train tracks can serve a couple of uses. One is to thaw the switches that determine which track a train goes down, which is what Metra, the Chicagoland commuter-rail authority, said was going on this week. Switches are moving parts, and if ice gets into them, they can freeze in place. There are various types of switch heaters, which might use electric current or gas to melt ice -- or even an open gas flame, which is what's appearing in the Metra videos. Where there aren't switch heaters, crews might use temporary torchlike devices with a flame, the railroad equivalent of the smudge pots farmers use to keep citrus groves and apple orchards from freezing on cold nights.

Mozilla has halted the rollout of v65 update to Firefox browser on Windows platform after learning about an issue with certain antivirus products. Users of Firefox 65, an update which was released last week, reported seeing "Your connection is not secure" error warnings when visiting popular sites. From a report: The issue mostly affected Firefox 65 users running AVG or Avast antivirus. The message appeared when users visited an HTTPS website and stated the 'Certificate is not trusted because the issuer is unknown' and that 'The server might not be sending the inappropriate intermediate certificates'.

The problem, reported on Mozilla's bug report page and first spotted by Techdows, is due to the HTTPS-filtering feature in Avast and AVG antivirus. Avast owns AVG. The bug prevented users from visiting any HTTPS site with Firefox 65. To limit the impact on users, Mozilla decided to temporarily halt all automatic updates on Windows. In the meantime, Avast, which owns AVG, released a new virus engine update that completely disabled Firefox HTTPS filtering in Avast and AVG products. HTTPS filtering remains enabled on other browsers.

At least six state attorneys general have launched investigations into Facebook, Bloomberg is reporting. From a report: Two distinct groups have formed, according to Bloomberg's report: Pennsylvania and Illinois have joined Connecticut in an investigation of "existing allegations," though the report does not mention what those are. Officials in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, "which were already known to be probing Facebook, are seeking to uncover any potential unknown violations," a source told the news agency.

Bloomberg reported that a Facebook vice president of public policy, Will Castleberry, spun the news as the attorneys general just wanting to help Facebook out by suggesting new privacy initiatives or something. "We're having productive conversations with attorneys general on this important topic," Castleberry wrote in an email to Bloomberg. "Many officials have approached us in a constructive manner, focused on solutions that ensure all companies are protecting people's information, and we look forward to continuing to work with them."

2018 was the worst year ever for smartphone shipments, according to the latest figures from research firm IDC. It means Apple isn't the only company fighting to keep people interested in buying new phones every year. From a report: IDC said 1.4 billion smartphones were sold in 2018, marking a 4.1 percent decline for the year in an industry that's accustomed to rapid growth. In 2014, as well, 1.4 billion phones were shipped, which means the industry seems to have regressed about 5 years. Shipments shrank 4.9 percent for the fourth quarter of 2018, IDC said. Apple said earlier this week that iPhone revenues were 15 percent lower than last year. CEO Tim Cook said the strengthened dollar, an economic slowdown in China, lower subsidies on phones and its battery replacement program contributed to the drop in sales. Samsung phone shipments declined 5.5 percent and Apple's slipped 11.5 percent during the quarter, IDC said. But Huawei, which was able to capitalize on China, saw a 33.6 percent bump in shipments. Chinese vendors Oppo and Xiaomi also increased shipments, IDC said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Contrary to popular Anglocentric belief, English isn't the world's most-spoken language by total number of native speakers -- nor is it the second. In fact, the West Germanic tongues rank third on the list, followed by Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, and Russian. (Mandarin and Spanish are first and second, respectively.) Surprisingly, Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Microsoft's Cortana recognize only a relatively narrow slice of these.

Google Assistant: With the addition of more than 20 new languages in January, the Google Assistant took the crown among voice assistants in terms of the number of tongues it understands. It's now conversant in 30 languages in 80 countries, up from 8 languages and 14 countries in 2017.
Apple's Siri: Apple's Siri, which until January had Google Assistant beat in terms of sheer breadth of supported languages, comes in a close second. Currently, it supports 21 languages in 36 countries and dozens of dialects for Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Microsoft's Cortana: Cortana, which made its debut at Microsoft's Build developer conference in April 2013 and later came to Windows 10, headphones, smart speakers, Android, iOS, Xbox One, and even Alexa via a collaboration with Amazon, might not support as many languages as Google Assistant and Siri. Still, it has come a long way in six years.
Amazon's Alexa: Alexa might be available on over 150 products in 41 countries, but it understands the fewest languages of any voice assistant: English (Australia, Canada, India, UK, and US), French (Canada, France), German, Japanese (Japan), and Spanish (Mexico, Spain).
Samsung's Bixby: Samsung's Bixby -- the assistant built into the Seoul, South Korea company's flagship and midrange Galaxy smartphone series and forthcoming Galaxy Home smart speaker -- is available in 200 markets globally but only supports a handful of languages in those countries: English, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Korean, and Spanish.

Mark Serrels, writing for CNET: Super Bowl 53 has come and gone and, for me at least, there was one clear highlight. This Microsoft commercial. [...] Essentially a commercial for Microsoft's Xbox Adaptive Controller, this ad follows up on an earlier ad from the Christmas period, which highlights young kids with limited mobility playing video games. It's incredible.

It tells the story of kids with limited mobility and their love for video games. All kids love video games and if you're a person with limited mobility, video games can often provide a pathway to experiences that are often difficult in the real world. But in some cases, particular types of limited mobility can make even the games themselves difficult to play -- which is where the Xbox Adaptive Controller comes in. Further reading: Xbox wire; and Why Xbox spent a year designing the Adaptive Controller packaging.

A 20-year-old college student who was accused of stealing more than $5 million in cryptocurrency in a slew of SIM hijacking attacks is the first person to be sentenced for the crime. From a report: A college student who stole more than $5 million in cryptocurrency by hijacking the phone numbers of around 40 victims pleaded guilty and accepted a plea deal of 10 years in prison, Motherboard has learned. Joel Ortiz accepted the plea deal last week, Erin West, the Deputy District Attorney in Santa Clara County, California, told Motherboard during a meeting on Thursday. The authorities believe Ortiz is the first person to be convicted of a crime for SIM swapping, an increasingly popular and damaging hack.

The prosecutors and agents who have been investigating these hacks celebrated the conviction, and said they hope that this will serve as an example for the other alleged criminals who have already been arrested, as well as the ones who have yet to be caught. "We think justice has been served. And hopefully this is a strong message to that community," Samy Tarazi, one of the agents who investigated the Ortiz case, told me. Ortiz is one af a handful of SIM swappers who have been arrested in the last year for hijacking phone numbers and using them to then hack into emails, social media accounts, and online Bitcoin wallets.

New research suggests that post-release movie piracy through The Pirate Bay is linked to increased box revenue. The counter-intuitive finding is driven by word-of-mouth promotion. The effect, which does not apply to pre-release piracy, results in rather interesting policy implications. From a report: Hollywood's general logic is that piracy hurts box office revenues. However, there is also some evidence of positive effects through word-of-mouth promotion. Using the Pirate Bay downtime as a natural experiment, the researchers tried to find out if thatâ(TM)s indeed the case. "It is natural to focus on the downsides of piracy for movie makers -- and these can be significant -- but many will be interested to note that piracy can have an upside," Professor Shijie Lu informs TF. Through their research, Lu and his co-authors Xin Wang and Neil Bendle, investigated the effect of this "buzz" in detail. They published their findings in a paper titled "Does Piracy Create Online Word-of-Mouth? An Empirical Analysis in Movie Industry."

Movies shared on The Pirate Bay are the main focus. The researchers use the Pirate Bay downtime following the 2014 raid to measure its impact on word-of-mouth promotion and box office revenues. Based on a sample of hundreds of movie torrents and data from most popular movie review sites, Lu and his colleagues estimated this effect. Their results are rather intriguing. First off, the findings clearly show a negative effect of pre-release piracy on box office sales. This result is consistent with previous studies and an increase in "buzz" doesn't do enough to offset the negative effect. [...] This changes when the researchers look at post-release piracy. That is, piracy which occurs after a film has premiered at the box office. In this case, there's a positive effect on box office revenue through an increase in word-of-mouth promotion (WOM).