AI Beats Professional Poker Players
January 31st, 2017Via: BBC:
A poker-playing AI has beaten four human players in a marathon match lasting 20 days.
Libratus, an artificial intelligence program developed at Carnegie Mellon University, was trained to play a variant of the game known as no-limit heads-up Texas hold ’em.
In a similar tournament in 2015, the humans won.
The victory has been hailed as a significant milestone for AI, by the team responsible for building it.
…
One of the professional poker players, Jimmy Chou, admitted at the halfway point that the AI was proving a tough opponent.
“The bot gets better and better every day. It’s like a tougher version of us,” he said.
“The first couple of days, we had high hopes,” Mr Chou said.
“But every time we find a weakness, it learns from us and the weakness disappears the next day.”
He added that the professionals had been sharing notes and tips in an effort to find weaknesses in the AI’s game-play.
But they were not the only ones doing homework.
Each night after the play ended, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Centre added computations to sharpen the AI’s strategy.
The FBI’s Secret Rules
January 31st, 2017Via: The Intercept:
For example, the bureau’s agents can decide that a campus organization is not “legitimate” and therefore not entitled to robust protections for free speech; dig for derogatory information on potential informants without any basis for believing they are implicated in unlawful activity; use a person’s immigration status to pressure them to collaborate and then help deport them when they are no longer useful; conduct invasive “assessments” without any reason for suspecting the targets of wrongdoing; demand that companies provide the bureau with personal data about their users in broadly worded national security letters without actual legal authority to do so; fan out across the internet along with a vast army of informants, infiltrating countless online chat rooms; peer through the walls of private homes; and more. The FBI offered various justifications of these tactics to our reporters. But the documents and our reporting on them ultimately reveal a bureaucracy in dire need of greater transparency and accountability.
LibreTaxi: Free and Open Source Alternative to Uber/Lyft
January 31st, 2017Via: LibreTaxi:
LibreTaxi makes taxi affordable by getting rid of the third party between passengers and drivers. Negotiate the price before the ride is confirmed, pay cash upon arrival. 1-minute hiring for all drivers.
Cafe X, Bringing Robots to the Coffee Shop
January 30th, 2017Via: TechCrunch:
The world’s first coffee shop opened in Constantinople in 1555. Four hundred and some years later, Cafe X is putting a twist on that old barista model. Opening in San Francisco today, the startup is opting instead to have a large robotic arm craft your caffeinated potions.
Trump Signs Executive Order to Slash Regulations
January 30th, 2017Via Reuters:
President Donald Trump signed an order on Monday that will seek to dramatically pare back federal regulations by requiring agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new rule introduced.
“This will be the biggest such act that our country has ever seen. There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be normalized control,” Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office, surrounded by a group of small business owners.
Bag of Chips Can Sense If You’ve Been Drinking and Call You an Uber
January 30th, 2017
Via: Mashable:
Tostitos’ new bag wants to chaperone your Super Bowl party.
In honor of the big game, the chip maker is launching a special-edition version of its packaging with a built-in sensor that can detect trace levels of alcohol in your breath.
If it decides you’ve been drinking — regardless of how much — an image of a red steering wheel appears on the otherwise stark black bag along with a reminder not to drive and a code for a $10 Uber discount (valid only on Super Bowl Sunday).
And if you’ve had so much to drink that the mere act of hailing an Uber becomes a difficult chore, the bag will even do that for you. The package is equipped with near-field communication technology that will automatically order a ride when tapped with a smartphone.
Chinese Fishery with a Giant Integrated Solar Array
January 29th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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It’s huge. Must see photos.
Via: Electrek:
The images were released by Xinhau in December and the People’s Daily in January. The 200MW project will produce greater than 220GWh/year of electricity. The project cost 1.8B RMB (US$260M) and covers an area of 300 hectares. The power generated by the station will be connected to the state grid, yielding an annual income of 240 million RMB (US$34M). In addition, another 13 million RMB (US$2M) will be earned through the fishery. Roughly, the system will pay for itself in seven to eight years.
Microplastics Found in Supermarket Fish, Shellfish
January 29th, 2017Via: CBC:
Tiny pieces of plastic are making their way into fish and shellfish found at the supermarket, a new study has shown.
The findings are part of a report prepared for the International Maritime Organization, the UN agency responsible for preventing marine pollution.
It’s not yet been established what effect these tiny particles of plastic will have on the humans who consume them, the report says.
Researchers do know, however, that microplastics get into aquatic habitats from many different sources, says Chelsea Rochman, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto and co-editor of the report.
These range from tiny fibres that come off the synthetic fabrics of our clothing, to bits of car tire that wear off on roads and make their way through storm drains into waterways, she says.
They also vary in size such that they can be consumed by marine animals both big and microscopic.
“It has infiltrated every level of the food chain in marine environments and likely fresh water, and so now we’re seeing it come back to us on our dinner plates,” says Rochman.
First Human-Pig ‘Chimera’ Created
January 27th, 2017Via: Guardian:
Scientists have created a human-pig hybrid in a milestone study that raises the prospect of being able to grow human organs inside animals for use in transplants.
It marks the first time that embryos combining two large, distantly-related species have been produced. The creation of this so-called chimera – named after the cross-species beast of Greek mythology – has been hailed as a significant first step towards generating human hearts, livers and kidneys from scratch.
Nuclear ‘Doomsday Clock’ Ticks Closest to Midnight in 64 Years
January 26th, 2017Via: Reuters:
Atomic scientists reset their symbolic “Doomsday Clock” to its closest time to midnight in 64 years on Thursday, saying the world was closer to catastrophe due to threats such as nuclear weapons, climate change and Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president.
The timepiece, devised by the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and displayed on its website, is widely viewed as an indicator of the world’s vulnerability to disaster.
Its hands were moved to two minutes and 30 seconds to midnight, from three minutes.
“The Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than it’s ever been in the lifetime of almost everyone in this room,” Lawrence Krauss, the bulletin’s chair, told a news conference in Washington.
The clock was last set this close to midnight in 1953, marking the start of the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Thursday’s reset was the first since 2015.
Krauss, a theoretical physicist, said Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin carried a large share of the blame for the heightened threat.
The bulletin cited nuclear volatility, especially as the United States and Russia seek to modernize their atomic arsenals and remain at odds in war-torn countries such as Syria and Ukraine.
Trump has suggested South Korea and Japan could acquire nuclear weapons to compete with North Korea, which has conducted nuclear tests. Trump has also raised doubts about the future of a multilateral nuclear pact with Iran.
Chinese aid to Pakistan in the nuclear weapons field, as well as the expansion of India and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals, were also worrisome, the bulletin said in a statement.
