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Tencent ‘s game store is available outside of China

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WeGame X is currently considered an Early Access service, and it shows. There are only 17 titles at present, most of them indies and few of them recognizable to non-Chinese gamers. My Time at Portia is the best-known title of the bunch for the global audience. You might see more prominent games in the near future, at least. Tencent is advertising support from companies like Deep Silver (publisher of Metro and Yakuza titles), Hello Games (No Man’s Sky) and Larian Studios (the Divinity series). Think of this as a baby step toward a larger presence. It might not tread on Epic’s toes, but it could be a viable alternative for some players.

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UK will hold social networks accountable for harmful content

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Both Facebook and Google have previously denied responsibility for the content published on their sites, evoking the communications act in the US to overcome lawsuits accusing them of enabling terrorism and spreading extremist views. But calls for big tech to be regulated have grown in recent years following a spate of controversial incidents, the most recent of which was the live-streaming of the mass shooting in New Zealand on Facebook.

Google, meanwhile, has been called out for the spread of conspiracy theories on YouTube. And Twitter has long grappled with toxic abuse on its site. Execs from all three companies have also appeared before Congress in relation to Russian activity on their respective platforms during the 2016 US election.

The new measures form part of the “Online Harms White Paper,” a joint proposal from the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Home Office, and have received the blessing of Prime Minister Theresa May.

“The internet can be brilliant at connecting people across the world – but for too long these companies have not done enough to protect users, especially children and young people, from harmful content,” said May in a statement. “That is not good enough, and it is time to do things differently. We have listened to campaigners and parents, and are putting a legal duty of care on internet companies to keep people safe.”

Earlier this year, the DCMS referred to Facebook’s senior management as “digital gangsters” in its report on fake news online. It added that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had shown “wilful contempt” toward the UK parliament by twice failing to appear before the committee. Facebook-owned Instagram was also recently forced to blur self-harm images on its app in the UK following the suicide of British schoolgirl Molly Russell. Her parents said her death came as a result of viewing images of self-harm on Instagram and Pinterest.

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Bang and Olufsen’s gorgeous OLED TV has ‘wing’ speakers that fold out

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Switch on the Harmony, and then the expensive magic happens, as those speaker screens fold away as the TV rises. It’s not a roll-up TV, but it is yet another attempt by a TV designer to make these devices less of an awkward black box. With the Harmony, your TV is almost statement furniture. It’s almost the opposite of Samsung’s Frame TV — you can’t miss it.

BeoVision Harmony

According to B&O VP Christoffer Østergaard Poulsen, the motion of the speaker wings was inspired by butterfly wings, challenging its designers and engineers to craft the motion needed neatly allow the wings to meet up.

BeoVision Harmony

Here in Milan, Bang and Olufsen showed off the Harmony for the first time, running technical demos consisting of sound tests and a bubbly OLED screen saver on the 77-inch screen. We’ve been promised a better sound test later — stay tuned for more. But already, in motion, the Harmony is a beautiful sight to behold, but you know there’s a caveat coming, right?

The Beovision Harmony will cost a dream-crushing 18,500 Euros (around $20,755), when it launches in Bang and Olufsen stores in October 2019.

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The ISS is crawling with nasty bacteria

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The microbes come from humans and are similar to the ones in gyms, offices, and hospitals on Earth. They include so-called opportunistic pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus (commonly found on the skin and in the nasal passage) and Enterobacter (associated with the human gastrointestinal tract). Though they can cause diseases back on Earth, it’s unclear what, if any, affect they’d have on the ISS’ inhabitants.

“Specific microbes in indoor spaces on Earth have been shown to impact human health,” Dr Kasthuri Venkateswaran, a senior research scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the study’s co-author, said. “This is even more important for astronauts during spaceflight, as they have altered immunity and do not have access to the sophisticated medical interventions available on Earth.”

As part of the study, the team used both traditional culture techniques and gene sequencing methods to analyse surface samples collected in eight locations on the ISS, including the viewing window, the toilet — which recently burst, spewing two gallons of water on the US crew — exercise platform, dining table and sleeping quarters, during three flights across 14 months.

“The ISS is a hermetically sealed closed system, subjected to microgravity, radiation, elevated carbon dioxide and the recirculation of air through HEPA filters, and is considered an ‘extreme environment,'” said Dr Venkateswaran — essentially the type of place where bacteria tend to thrive. Researchers claim the study can be used to improve safety measures for NASA astronauts, long-term space travel or living in space.

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Amazon’s Fire Stick TV 4K supports Miracast screen mirroring

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To use it, you can enable display mirroring from the shortcut or settings menus. Your device will need to support Miracast, which has largely fallen out of use and was actually dropped by Google with Android 9 Pie. That’s because there aren’t likely too many use case scenarios (such as a lack of internet connection on your device) that don’t let you use an app to watch programs. Miracast is still largely available on Windows devices, however.

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Ecobee’s first home security camera might include Alexa

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It’s uncertain what other party tricks the camera might have, although Zatz speculates that it could incorporate presence sensors (currently a separate purchase) to have your thermostat change the temperature when you get home. Release details are still up in the air. Given that there’s already a seemingly finished press image of the camera, though, you might not have to wait very long.

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New York’s first attempt at recognizing drivers’ faces has failed

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The problem may be inherent to the early state of facial recognition at these speeds. Oak Ridge National Laboratory achieved more than 80 percent accuracy in a study that spotted faces through windshields, but that was at low speed. It might not be ready for someone barrelling down a bridge.

Not that privacy advocates will necessarily mind. Facial recognition is already a contentious issue, let alone when it’s being used to peep into cars. Whether or not you see it as an Orwellian intrusion that could lead to abuses of power, there are accuracy problems at the best of times. It sometimes has trouble recognizing non-white people and women, and it assumes a culprit won’t wear a mask or another disguise. While no terrorist detection system is foolproof, there are real concerns that current approaches could generate false positives or let suspects slip through the cracks.

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Reddit’s ‘Change My View’ community becomes a dedicated site

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The stand-alone site makes it easier to award a “delta” (a vote for a persuasive comment) and mark comments as illuminating.

At the moment, Change A View is more of an extension of the subreddit than anything. It shows how even Reddit’s relatively flexible community format has its limits. However, Turnbull told Wired that he saw it becoming a platform for other conversations online, possibly replacing the sometimes toxic comment systems you see online. That, in turn, could lead to more nuanced and respectful discussions instead of the flame wars that are all too common today.

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Netflix debuts Beyoncé Coachella show documentary on April 17th

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You probably don’t think of Netflix as a go-to place for music documentaries beyond Taylor Swift’s tour movie, but it’s determined to burnish its image. The service has teased the April 17th debut of a previously rumored documentary on Beyoncé’s much-hyped performance at the 2018 Coachella festival — conveniently, just ahead of the 2019 festival’s second weekend. You won’t find a trailer or other details, but there’s little doubt that the teaser is a callback to both the yellow outfits Bey’s team wore as well as the launch of her Homecoming Scholars Awards Program at the same time.



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Twitter’s bans ahead of Israeli election include an odd religious sect

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The exact intentions are unknown. The accounts were apparently boosting political messages for right-wing Israeli politicians, although they didn’t promote Netanyahu. This was out of the norm for them — most of their posts were religious. The Chinese government isn’t likely to be involved given that it has regularly attacked the group and forced the founder’s wife to seek asylum in New York City’s Flushing neighborhood.

The issue isn’t so much the accounts themselves as the lack of explanations for what happened. A Twitter spokesperson wouldn’t comment on the record about the suspensions, including how it was alerted to the behavior, how many accounts were pulled. BuzzFeed claimed that the accounts surfaced through the work of two anti-manipulation researchers, Yuval Adam and Noam Rotem, but this hasn’t been confirmed.

Whatever the motivations, the bans highlight some inconsistency surrounding Twitter’s approach to fighting election meddling. It has often been highly specific about crackdowns, pointing out the origins and goals, but not in this case. Users might not have even realized that an influence campaign was underway, let alone that Twitter was taking action. It might take some time before you can be reliably aware of its efforts to prevent election meddling.

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