That means that when Microsoft showed Windows 10 overtaking Windows 7, this apparently happened in August last year. Most other analysts don’t see that seismic shift happening globally until December 2017, at the earliest.
Source: Microsoft shows Windows 10 market share growing steadily, but the numbers are fake [Updated]
But prices for lithium-ion batteries have fallen fast—by almost half just since 2014. Electric cars are largely responsible, increasing demand and requiring a new scale of manufacturing for the same battery cells used in grid storage. California is mandating that its utilities begin testing batteries by adding more than 1.32 gigawatts by 2020. For context, consider this: In 2016, the global market for storage was less than a gigawatt.
Source: Tesla’s Battery Revolution Just Reached Critical Mass – Bloomberg
Libratus was developed by Computer Science Professor Tuomas Sandholm and his Ph.D. student, Noam Brown. Libratus is being used in this contest to play poker, an imperfect information game that requires the AI to bluff and correctly interpret misleading information to win. Ultimately programs like Libratus also could be used to negotiate business deals, set military strategy or plan a course of medical treatment — all cases that involve complicated decisions based on imperfect information.
Source: CMU AI Is Tough Poker Player | Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science
It turns out that, according to the data Tesla gave investigators, installing Autopilot prevents crashes—by an astonishing 40 percent.
Source: Tesla’s Autopilot Vindicated With 40% Drop in Crashes – Bloomberg
In October, the company began shipping new Autopilot hardware with enhanced sensors that it says will eventually enable fully autonomous driving. Every car now ships with eight cameras and a dozen sensors to give 360-degree visibility. The company is rolling out new features that make use of the sensor suite in regular over-the-air updates.
The full story is admittedly lengthy, clocking in at over 8000 words, but worth the time to understand how botnet wranglers make money siccing their zombie device armies on unsuspecting targets. The sources that pointed Krebs to Anna Senpai’s identity were involved in using botnets on behalf of shadowy clients, unleashing them on security companies protecting lucrative Minecraft servers that host thousands of players. When their online gaming is obstructed — say, by repeated and annoying DDoS attacks — players leave, giving servers an incentive to jump ship to whichever security provider can ensure protection…in this case, providers that arranged for the botnet attacks in the first place.
Source: Krebs pinpoints the likely author of the Mirai botnet
By replacing independent, fragmented databases with a distributed system, banks can reduce data reconciliation costs while also improving data quality and ensuring data security.
Source: Blockchain Tech Could Save Banks $12 Billion A Year
It has become increasingly obvious in recent months that blockchain will be key to the future of the banking industry, with the majority of banks expected to adopt the technology within the next three years.
While it’s amusing to make fun of Giuliani, hiring people with little or no bona fide security experience to head up cybersecurity practices in government is sadly a tried and true pastime in Washington. Instead of tapping actual computer security experts, politicians in many cases continue to put their friends or people they know in charge of a monumental problem that requires expertise beyond having many political connections or relationships with donors.
From: Trump’s cyber-guru Giuliani runs ancient ‘easily hackable website’
“You can probably break into Giuliani’s server,” said Robert Graham of Errata Security. “I know this because other FreeBSD servers in the same data center have already been broken into, tagged by hackers, or are now serving viruses.
“But that doesn’t matter. There’s nothing on Giuliani’s server worth hacking.”
If law firms think they may be forced to pay defendants’ enormous legal bills, it could undermine the entire business model of patent trolls.
Source: A potentially fatal blow against patent trolls
Patent trolls directly threaten the industry of ideas. They dilute the value of legitimate patents while making honorable companies suspicious of legitimate patent complaints. This was never what patents were all about. They were designed to protect inventors who came up with truly innovative ways of doing things.
Norway is set to become the first nation to start switching off its FM radio network next week, in a risky and unpopular leap to digital technology that will be closely watched by other countries considering whether to follow suit.
Source: Norway to switch off FM radio in risky, unpopular shift to digital
For the same cost, digital radio in Norway allows eight times more radio stations than FM.
But now even Ke, the reigning top-ranked Go player, has acknowledged that human beings are no match for robots in the complex board game, after he lost three games to an AI that mysteriously popped up online in recent days.
The AI turned out to be AlphaGo in disguise.