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Adobe will kill Shockwave on April 9th

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It won’t surprise you to hear why Adobe is ramping things down: the internet has moved on. Shockwave use has “declined” as technologies like HTML5 and WebGL have taken over, the company said. It’s betting that developers would rather move on to newer, truly universal formats if they’re still committed to supporting their web apps.

You might not miss it too much on most websites, but it could still cause problems. Many older web games and media experiences were built around Shockwave, which enabled visually exciting web apps at a time when HTML wasn’t up to snuff and powerful, consumer-friendly smartphones were just pipe dreams. When many of the developers ended support long ago, the death of Shockwave is likely to make those apps unusuable.

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Robots are playing ASMR-infused techno at SXSW

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“When I’m searching for new sounds and new robots, I’m thinking of like, I need this sound in music,” Geist said. “If I would make my track in the computer, I would need like a hi-hat or whatever. So I’m thinking, how could this be done in the real world? OK, a noise like tshh. How does this happen here? And then you easily come to pneumatic air-pressure things.”

“Have an open eye to the world and see structures, get inspired, connect the dots.”

The robots have secrets of their own. It takes Geist an average of four months to put together a robot for touring, which includes instruments made out of printed circuit boards, 3D-printed kalimbas, flashing LEDs and pneumatic valve systems. Each robot is custom, and they all have visual elements of some kind. The air-pressure machine that serves as a hi-hat, for instance, includes a series of tubes filled with small white styrofoam balls that bounce up and down with the air flow. At first blush, it looks like the tiny spheres themselves are making the tshh noises, but listen closer, and it’s clearly controlled bursts of air pressure.

“I think it’s very important to just have an open eye to the world and see structures, get inspired, connect the dots,” Geist said. “See structures where you think, OK, I could really use this and just like turn this into a metaphor for whatever. This is super important.”

Geist, who teaches a class on the evolution of technology and society at NYU Berlin, is convinced robots will only become more integrated into the music industry as time passes, just as they’re infiltrating wider society. Robots and artificial intelligence are tools, he said, and like any tool, they’re neither inherently good nor bad. It all depends on how we use them.

Moritz Simon Geist

“As humanity, we started off with hammers and really crazy stuff to extend our capabilities of a human being,” Geist said. “I mean, robots and artificial intelligence — the robots are made for the body and the algorithms are made for the brain, so there’s this duality. This is an extension of our capabilities in the world and the interaction between us and the world, physically and metaphorically.” He paused and laughed. “What was the question?”

“Humans are very, very good in detecting the smallest, subtle changes.”

Geist’s coming EP is fittingly called Speculative Machine and it’s a soothing, booming, four-track exercise in resonant bass and tinkling metal. Even as he helps craft the AI-powered takeover of the music industry, Geist isn’t concerned about the robots he builds taking his job. Already there are programs that will generate copyright-free songs for people to use in personal projects, podcast intros, Kickstarter campaigns or trailers — functional music. However, music is as much emotion as it is carefully placed rhythm, and a song with any staying power will require that human connection, Geist said.

“The step from functional music to music which is emotionally connected to this, kind of like pop music, that’s a big leap,” he said. “It might take a while until this is replaced. I don’t think it’s so easy, because in the end, humans are needing something they can connect to emotionally. For me, AI is very difficult to do this in a whole in the pop music scene. … This emotionality — humans are very, very good in detecting the smallest, subtle changes.”

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NVIDIA will stop supporting 3D glasses in April

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Other software is affected. NVIDIA’s tool for running games on 3D TVs, 3DTV Play, is now bundled with the Release 418 drivers for free. However, the 3D Vision Video Player app will only be available (again for free) through the end of 2019.

The company didn’t explain the decision to pull 3D Vision (we’ve asked for comment). However, it’s likely down to adoption and resources. Stereoscopic 3D glasses have lost their luster in recent years, particularly in an era of more affordable VR headsets. There’s not much point to supporting technology that relatively few people use, especially when NVIDIA recently launched a new graphics architecture with ray tracing and other distinctive features that need their own support.

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Spain halts plans to use electric shock treatment on violent inmates

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The current targets the prefrontal cortex, an area of ​​the brain that has been linked to decision-making and moderating social behavior. The preliminary results of the test were published in the journal Neuroscience in January. It marked the first time tDCS was used on prisoners, according to Vox, with the team behind it noting that the pilot reduced self-perceived aggression.

Phase two, as previously approved by prison authorities, was set to include at least 12 convicted murderers and additional inmates this month. But the decision to continue the experiment in the Huelva prison in southwest Spain has been “paralyzed” by the interior ministry, reports newspaper El Pais.

The process, which the team clams is physically painless, involves strapping electrodes to a prisoner’s head and turning on an electric current for 15 minutes per day over the course of three days. Before and after, the inmates fill out a questionnaire asking them if they agree with statements, such as “I sometimes feel like a powder keg ready to explode.” Researchers then analyze any noted differences in their responses to assess the effects of tCDS.

Psychologist Andrés Molero-Chamizo, who is leading the project, also hopes to collect samples of each participant’s saliva to look at their cortisol levels: A stress hormone that could provide clues to the inmate’s aggression.

Whereas controversial electric shock devices are already being utlized as a method of punishment in prisons in the US and overseas, tDCS carries its own ethical implications. Scientists have questioned the inmates’ consent to the trials in what is already a coercive environment. “Prisoners could always be thinking that this might be beneficial to their case in the future,” forensic psychiatrist Delaney Smith previously told New Scientist.

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NBC’s free news streaming service will fully launch in May

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Some of the material you see will be original, but Oppenheim added that News Now will pull material from the “other corners” of NBCUniversal, including E News and sports.

The service will be entering a competitive field. ABC News Live is the most obvious rival due to its relatively recent launch, but there’s also the long-serving CBSN as well as online-focused outlets like Cheddar. NBC might not have much choice, as Oppenheim pointed out. People’s news habits are “changing rapidly,” he said — if NBC didn’t act, it might miss out on viewers who have no inclination to tune in to conventional TV.

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Nearly half of the votes in Estonia’s election were cast online

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Estonia started this kind of voting in 2005 using chipped IDs and card readers, but it took off in 2011 when the public could vote with their cellphones thanks to a special SIM card and PIN codes. It’s appealing beyond the convenience of voting on your own terms, we’d add. You’re allowed to change your vote between the start of advance voting and the fourth day before the election (you can’t use i-voting on election day), and you can verify that election officials received your vote.

It may take a long while before other countries adopt this model, though. Estonia is a tiny country (just 561,131 people voted in the election), and it’s not as juicy a target for foreign interference as the US or western Europe. While Estonia has taken steps to secure the voting process, researchers have discovered vulnerabilities in the past. Any use in a major country would likely need an airtight system where hacks would be extremely difficult.

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Palmer Luckey’s firm wins Pentagon drone AI contract

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Anduril is most commonly known for its existing system, Lattice. It also uses machine learning, in this case to identify objects for the sake of border monitoring (such as a pitch for a virtual border wall) and battlefield awareness. In the long run, Luckey hopes to give soldiers “perfect omniscience” where they’re rarely surprised on the battlefield.

The company’s involvement isn’t surprising. While employees from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants have lately balked at working on military projects, Luckey has been an eager supporter ever since his contentious ouster from Facebook. He has previously argued that the industry needs to support the military if it believes in peace. In that light, Project Maven is a logical extension for Luckey — it’s his chance to shape warfare on a large scale.

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US arrests cryptocurrency exec over ‘multibillion-dollar’ fraud

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OneCoin is still running, and has apparently been very lucrative. The firm made about €2.2 billion ($2.5 billion) in profit just between 2014 and 2016, according to the US Justice Department. A third defendant already charged in the scheme, Mark Scott, was said to have laundered over $400 million through banks in places like the Cayman Islands and Ireland.

All of the culprits could face significant penalties if they’re found guilty. Ignatov’s lone charge could lead up to 20 years in prison, while Ignatova faces four charges with 20-year maximum sentences and one with five. Scott also faces up to 20 years behind bars.

While the cryptocurrency was ultimately a front, the arrest illustrates the ongoing challenges of policing virtual money. The technology is still young, and officials still aren’t sure how to regulate it — crooks might thrive simply due to a lack of scrutiny. High-profile busts like could help discourage future crypto scams, or at least limit the potential damage.

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Facebook sues two Ukranians over data-stealing browser add-ons

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Gorbachov and Sluchevsky have been accused of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse act by accessing data without permission, as well as breach of contract and fraud for misleading Facebook into believing they were above-board. The two reportedly used fake names, and were caught in October 2018 after Facebook conducted a deeper look into browser extensions.

The browser plugins had some success with about 63,000 infections between 2017 and 2018, and also caused some damage to Facebook’s bottom line. The company estimated that it spent over $75,000 looking into the intrusion. While the lawsuit doesn’t call for specific damages, it wouldn’t be shocking for Facebook to try and recoup its expenses.

Lawsuits like this could discourage others from trying similar moves, although this particular case may have a limited effect when Facebook can’t compel Gorbachov or Sluchevsky to come to the US. More importantly, it may polish Facebook’s image. The firm has been at the heart of multiple privacy scandals in recent months, and lawsuits like this could show that it’s taking a more aggressive approach toward data thieves — even if more substantial privacy reforms could take much longer.

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NVIDIA joins Intel in bidding war for major Israeli chip maker

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Mellanox and Intel have declined to comment, while NVIDIA wasn’t available for comment on the weekend. Xilinx is also believed to be involved in the bidding, but Reuters believed that NVIDIA is close enough that it could unveil a deal as soon as March 11th.

While the exact reasons for a potential deal aren’t clear, NVIDIA would have more than a few incentives to buy Mellanox — some of which you might notice. It could be most helpful for servers, supercomputers and other situations where you need many processors working in tandem. At the same time, it could also be useful for self-driving cars (where multiple processors may have to coordinate actions), or even ensuring fast connections between multiple GPUs in workstations and gaming PCs.

For Intel, it would be more of a defensive play. Intel and Mellanox have both cornered the market for the InfiniBand technology used to link computer clusters, and this could help keep the technology out of the hands of NVIDIA, AMD and other competitors. It could also help with Intel’s ambitions as it eyes quantum computing and other technologies that could depend on very fast connections.

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