An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The government backlash against video game loot boxes -- the randomized in-game item purchases that some observers and legislators consider a form of gambling -- moved from Hawaii to Washington state earlier this month. That's when a group of three Democratic state senators introduced a bill that would require the state gambling commission to examine loot boxes and determine "whether games and apps containing these mechanisms are considered gambling under Washington law." "What the bill says is, 'Industry, state: sit down to figure out the best way to regulate this,'" Orcas Island Senator and bill coauthor Kevin Ranker told the Tacoma News Tribune. "It is unacceptable to be targeting our children with predatory gambling masked in a game with dancing bunnies or something."

The bill text puts specific focus on the question of whether children who "may be more vulnerable to gambling addiction" should be allowed to access games with loot boxes, and on the question of "transparency" around "the odds of receiving each type of virtual item." The latter point took on additional salience last month as Apple required such odds to be posted alongside games with loot boxes. Actual government regulation of loot boxes in Washington is still a ways off, though. Ranker's bill needs to be approved by the full Washington state legislature (which is narrowly held by Democrats) and be signed by the governor before being referred to the gambling commission. At that point, the commission would have until December 1 to form its recommendations for any regulatory and enforcement system the state might set up.

Major global technology providers SAP, Symantec, and McAfee have allowed Russian authorities to hunt for vulnerabilities in software deeply embedded across the U.S. government, Reuters reported on Thursday. From the report: The practice potentially jeopardizes the security of computer networks in at least a dozen federal agencies, U.S. lawmakers and security experts said. It involves more companies and a broader swath of the government than previously reported. In order to sell in the Russian market, the tech companies let a Russian defense agency scour the inner workings, or source code, of some of their products. Russian authorities say the reviews are necessary to detect flaws that could be exploited by hackers. But those same products protect some of the most sensitive areas of the U.S government, including the Pentagon, NASA, the State Department, the FBI and the intelligence community, against hacking by sophisticated cyber adversaries like Russia.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's a staple of the British diet and a popular choice for a quick and easy lunch. But new research reveals the carbon footprint of the humble sandwich could be fuelling harmful greenhouse emissions. The worst offender is revealed as the ready-made "all-day breakfast" sandwich, crammed with egg, bacon and sausage. Researchers at the University of Manchester carried out the first ever study of the carbon footprint of sandwiches -- both home-made and ready-made. They considered the entire life cycle of sandwiches, including the production of ingredients, packaging, refrigeration and food waste. The team scrutinised 40 different sandwich types, recipes and combinations and found the highest carbon footprints for the sandwiches containing pork meat (bacon, ham or sausages) and also those filled with cheese or prawns. The researchers estimate that a ready-made (and highly calorific) all-day breakfast sandwich generates 1441g of carbon dioxide equivalent -- equal to the emissions created by driving a car for 12 miles (19km).

FastCompany reports: Machine learning and artificial intelligence are so difficult to understand, only a few very smart computer scientists know how to build them. But the designers of a new tool have a big ambition: to create the Javascript for AI. The tool, called Cortex, uses a graphical user interface to make it so that building an AI model doesn't require a PhD. The honeycomb-like interface, designed by Mark Rolston of Argodesign, enables developers -- and even designers -- to use premade AI "skills," as Rolston describes them, that can do things like sentiment analysis or natural language processing. They can then drag and drop these skills into an interface that shows the progression of the model. The key? Using a visual layout to organize the system makes it more accessible to non-scientists.

Scientists moved the hands of the symbolic "Doomsday Clock" closer to midnight on Thursday amid increasing worries over nuclear weapons and climate change. From a report: The clock is now two minutes to midnight. "Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe," said Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "This is the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War." Each year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a non-profit group that sets the clock, decides whether the events of the previous year pushed humanity closer or farther from destruction. The symbolic clock is now the closest it's been to midnight since 1953. It was also two minutes to midnight in 1953 when the hydrogen bomb was first tested.

Can an iPad replace your computer? It has been the topic of debate for years, with plenty of people advising against it. Apple sure begs to differ. It has been running a commercial in which it predicts a world where a computer is extinct and a child with an iPad doesn't even know what the word "computer" means. Business Insider reports that plenty of people are finding that commercial annoying. From the report: "Does this commercial tick anybody else off?" writes one commenter on a snippet of the commercial that was posted to Facebook. "I want to smack this kid. What's a computer? You know what a computer is you disrespectful smarta--!!" Plenty of other social media posts, some with thousands of retweets, have made the same observation.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo resigned today from a panel that advises the Federal Communications Commission on broadband deployment, alleging that the committee is dealing internet service providers "a very favorable hand" of policy recommendations, Axios reports. From the report: The Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee is a key element of Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's priority of making sure broadband internet reaches all Americans. "It has become abundantly clear that despite the good intentions of several participants, the industry-heavy makeup of BDAC will simply relegate the body to being a vehicle for advancing the interests of the telecommunications industry over those of the public," said Liccardo, a Democrat, in his resignation letter. He told Axios that he thought that the committee's draft recommendations were trying to "steamroll cities" in favor of industry access to infrastructure. He pointed to a draft model law that would give states power over permitting for wireless broadband infrastructure at the expense, Liccardo says, of cities' interests.

Google on Thursday pushed an update to its marquee Web browser Chrome, now at v64, which offers a handful of new features including an improved ad blocker. From a report: Most of the new features included with Chrome 64 are meant to improve the browser's support for the ever-changing web standards that drive the modern Internet. For example, Chrome 64 is choke full of support for new browser APIs, new CSS properties, new JavaScript (ECMAScript) features, and changes to Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. [...] Other big changes that shipped with Chrome 64 are on the browser's security side. For starters, Chrome 64 includes mitigations against the web-exploitable Spectre flaw. Further, Chrome 64 also comes with a bolstered popup blocker that can now block tab-under behavior, being much more efficient at blocking malvertising redirects.

One of Britain's biggest car insurers has admitted increasing premiums for drivers who apply using a Hotmail account. From a report: Motorists seeking cover from Admiral could be charged $45 extra if they use certain email addresses. The insurer said some domain names were "associated with more accidents" than others, raising applicants' risk profile. Figures from the Association of British Insurers to be published today show that the cost of car insurance has increased by more than a quarter over the past three years. Admiral said that hundreds of factors were used by underwriters in setting car insurance, with riskier motorists paying more. Issues included the age of a driver and their postcode.

In a speech earlier this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the inability of law enforcement authorities to access data from electronic devices due to powerful encryption is an "urgent public safety issue." He proposed that Silicon Valley companies should add a backdoor to their encryption so that they could both "provide data security and permit lawful access with a court order." One person is not amused by Wray's proposal. Senator Ron Wyden criticized Wray on Thursday for not consulting him before going public with the proposal for encryption. Wyden said today, via Gizmodo: Your stated position parrots the same debunked arguments espoused by your predecessors, all of whom ignored the widespread and vocal consensus of cryptographers. For years, these experts have repeatedly stated that what you are asking for is not, in fact, possible. Building secure software is extremely difficult, and vulnerabilities are often introduced inadvertently in the design process. Eliminating these vulnerabilities is a mammoth task, and experts are unified in their opinion that introducing deliberate vulnerabilities would likely create catastrophic unintended consequences that could debilitate software functionality and security entirely.

[...] I would like to learn more about how you arrived at and justify this ill-informed policy proposal. Please provide me with a list of the cryptographers with whom you've personally discussed this topic since our July 2017 meeting and specifically identify those experts who advised you that companies can feasibly design government access features into their products without weakening cybersecurity. Please provide this information by February 23, 2018.

The prime minister of UK says she wants the country to lead the world in deciding how artificial intelligence can be deployed in a safe and ethical manner. From a report: In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Theresa May said a new advisory body, previously announced in the Autumn Budget, will co-ordinate efforts with other countries. In addition, she confirmed that the UK would join the Davos forum's own council on artificial intelligence. [...] The prime minister based the UK's claim to leadership in part on the health of its start-up economy, quoting a figure that a new AI-related company has been created in the country every week for the last three years. In addition, she said the UK is recognised as first in the world for its preparedness to "bring artificial intelligence into government."

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg: Apple is ready to take on Amazon.com in the digital book market again, years after regulators forced the iPhone maker to back down from an earlier effort to challenge the e-commerce giant's lead. Apple is working on a redesigned version of its iBooks e-book reading application for iPhones and iPads and has hired an executive from Amazon to help. The new app, due to be released in coming months, will include a simpler interface that better highlights books currently being read and a redesigned digital book store that looks more like the new App Store launched last year, according to people familiar with its development. The revamped app in testing includes a new section called Reading Now and a dedicated tab for audio books, the people said. Apple released an early version of its iOS 11.3 mobile operating system update to developers on Wednesday, providing a hint that the new e-books app is on the way. The app is now simply called "Books," rather than "iBooks," according to the update.

theodp writes: Speaking to a class of Grade 7 students taking coding lessons at the Apple Store in Eaton Centre, the Toronto Star reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook told the kids that most students would shun programming because coding languages were 'too geeky' until Apple introduced Swift. "Swift came out of the fundamental recognition that coding languages were too geeky. Most students would look at them and say, 'that's not for me,'" Cook said as the preteens participated in an Apple-designed 'Everyone Can Code' workshop. "That's not our view. Our view is that coding is a horizontal skill like your native languages or mathematics, so we wanted to design a programming language that is as easy to learn as our products are to use."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Press Herald: In a study published Monday in the journal Emotion, psychologists from San Diego State University and the University of Georgia used data on mood and media culled from roughly 1.1 million U.S. teens to figure out why a decades-long rise in happiness and satisfaction among U.S. teenagers suddenly shifted course in 2012 and declined sharply over the next four years. Was this sudden reversal a response to an economy that tanked in 2007 and stayed bad well into 2012? Or did it have its roots in a very different watershed event: the 2007 introduction of the smartphone, which put the entire online world at a user's fingertips?

In the new study, researchers tried to find it by plumbing a trove of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders' responses to queries on how they felt about life and how they used their time. They found that between 1991 and 2016, adolescents who spent more time on electronic communication and screens -- social media, texting, electronic games, the internet -- were less happy, less satisfied with their lives and had lower self-esteem. TV watching, which declined over the nearly two decades they examined, was similarly linked to lower psychological well-being. By contrast, adolescents who spent more time on non-screen activities had higher psychological well-being. They tended to profess greater happiness, higher self-esteem and more satisfaction with their lives. While these patterns emerged in the group as a whole, they were particularly clear among eighth- and 10th-graders, the authors found: "Every non-screen activity was correlated with greater happiness, and every screen activity was correlated with less happiness."

A team of Korean scientists have developed a smart lens that could help diabetics track blood glucose levels while remaining stretchable enough to be comfortable and transparent enough to preserve vision. Engadget reports: The lens achieves its flexibility thanks to a design that puts its electronics into isolated pockets linked by stretchable conductors. There's also an elastic material in between that spreads the strain to prevent the electronics from breaking when you pinch the lens. And when the refractive indices all line up, you should get a lens that's as transparent as possible and largely stays out of your way. The sensor in question is straightforward: an LED light stays on as long as glucose levels are normal, and shuts off when something's wrong. Power comes through a metal nanofiber antenna that draws from a nearby power source coil. That's about the only major drawback -- the low conductivity of the antenna means that you can't just tuck the coil wherever it's convenient. The co-author of the study, Jang-Ung Park, told IEEE Spectrum that a commercial version of the contact lens should arrive within the next five years.