Day: May 26, 2019

How a Professor Beat Roulette, Crediting a Non-Existent Supercomputer

I loved this story. The Hustle remembers how in 1964 a world-renowned medical professor found a way to beat roulette wheels, kicking off a five-year winning streak in which he amassed $1,250,000 ($8,000,000 today). He noticed that at the end of each night, casinos would replace cards and dice with fresh sets — but the…


World Health Organization deems ‘gaming disorder’ an official illness – CNET

Video game addiction gets added to the organization’s latest list of modern-day ills. …read more Source:: CNet


Windows 10 May 2019 Update installation stops on some AMD systems

AMD RAID drivers blamed for stopping Windows 10 v1903 updates. …read more Source:: ZDNet


‘The Future of AT&T Is An Ad-tracking Nightmare Hellworld’

There’s something scary in Fortune’s new article about AT&T: “Say you and your neighbor are both DirecTV customers and you’re watching the same live program at the same time,” says Brian Lesser, who oversees the vast data-crunching operation that supports this kind of advertising at AT&T. “We can now dynamically change the advertising. Maybe your…


CEO of Candy Crush developer stepping down – CNET

Riccardo Zacconi has been at the helm of game developer King Digital for more than 16 years. …read more Source:: CNet


Chatterbox Voice Assistant Knows To Keep Quiet For Privacy

Cruising through the children’s hands-on activity zone at Maker Faire Bay Area, we see kids building a cardboard enclosure for the Chatterbox smart speaker kit. It would be tempting to dismiss the little smiling box as “just for kids” but doing so would overlook something more interesting: an alternative to data-mining corporations who dominate the…


In A World First, Scientists Change Snail’s Shell-Coiling Direction With CRISPR

“Most snails are ‘righties’. Now scientists have found genes that can change the shell coiling direction,” writes the New York Times. ( Non-paywalled version here ) Suren Enfiajyan shares their report: Studying these snails offers clues to the evolution of body plans in many animals. It also could be important for understanding why up to…


Will Disney+ Destroy Netflix?

“Netflix has 175 days left to pull off a miracle… or it’s all over,” argues a headline at Forbes for an article by the chief analyst at disruption research firm RiskHedge: Netflix is not the future of TV. Netflix changed how we watch TV, but it didn’t really change what we watch… Netflix has achieved…


MIDI Association Explains ‘Capability Inquiry’ Features In MIDI 2.0

Friday the MIDI Association published an introduction to MIDI 2.0, describing updates to the already-evolving 36-year-old standard, including MIDI-CI, Profiles and Property Exchange: MIDI 2.0 updates MIDI with new auto-configuration, extended resolution, increased expressiveness, and tighter timing — all while maintaining a high priority on backward compatibility. This major update of MIDI paves the way…


Acer intros Nitro 5 gaming laptop, Swift 3 thin-and-light with 2nd-generation AMD Ryzen processors

The Nitro can also be equipped with Radeon RX 560X graphics, while the 14-inch Swift 3 laptop weighs in at just 3.2 pounds. …read more Source:: ZDNet