Litecoin vs. bitcoin

Although Bitcoin remains the flagship cryptocurrency to many, that hasn’t stopped hundreds of developers from releasing hundreds of alternative coins over the years. One of the first to hit the scene was Litecoin in 2011, making it one of the oldest “alt-coins” — and a powerful cryptocurrency in its own right, with a market worth billions.

But what if you pit Litecoin vs. Bitcoin? Is one cryptocurrency better than the other everywhere, or do they both have their strengths? In this breakdown, we’ll match the two head to head to see which one you’re best off buyng, whatever you want to use them for.

If you’re interested in more cryptocurrency comparisons, check out our guide to Ethereum, and how it measures up compared to bitcoin.

As a store of value

Although making money wasn’t the original idea for cryptocurrencies, that’s what many buyers and sellers use them for, not least because almost all have spiked in value in recent months. Many early owners have made huge amounts of money over the past year. That’s not to say any of it is a guarantee. Cryptocurrencies of all types are notoriously volatile, and have been especially so in recent times.

Bitcoin went from being worth around $1,000 at the start of 2017 to close to $20,000 in December, before settling to around $12,000 at the start of 2018. Litecoin had a similarly meteoric rise. It rose from just $4 in January 2017 to more than $370 at its peak less than 12 months later. At the time of writing, it’s corrected to $150.

This is a pattern that’s been repeated among most cryptocurrencies, however. With Litecoin at least, there is a lot of name recognition. As one of the oldest cryptocurrencies, it’s established and has a longer history than almost all others of retaining its value over time. It’s also supported by a wide array of exchanges, making it easier to buy and sell Litecoin. With a growing list of avenues where you can spend Litecoin, it is a more useful cryptocurrency than most.

All of the above benefits are also present with Bitcoin. It has the longest proven record of all cryptocurrencies by virtue of being the very first. It’s also accepted at the most outlets, and its support across the globe is strongest. When it comes to name recognition too, there is no denying that Bitcoin is the most visible. For more mainstream audiences, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are synonymous, and with a topic as complicated as this, that seems unlikely to change.

Bitcoin is still the best store of value. It’s well recognized, supported by almost all cryptocurrency services, and has a longer history. Litecoin is one of the better alt-coins when it comes to storing value, however, so it’s a good pick if you’re looking to try out a different currency.

As a transaction medium

JackGuez/GettyImages

Even if Bitcoin is stronger as a way of storing value over time, Litecoin clearly has the edge in transferring wealth as payments and transactions. That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as that was the original purpose of the cryptocurrency. Litecoin’s key developer, Charlie Lee, realized that Bitcoin was going to find things difficult when it reached a certain concentration of users. Namely, he saw that transaction fees were going to go up in the future due to fundamental problems with Bitcoin’s design.

It’s all about speed. Bitcoin’s block confirmation time is 10 minutes. In comparison, Litecoin’s block time is a quarter of that, with an average of 2.5 minutes. That means Litecoin transactions are confirmed faster, and that in turn means there’s less of a backlog, and fees can be lower.

At the time of writing, Litecoin has maintained that average block time of around 2.5 minutes, with transaction costs for those completing transactions somewhere around $0.30. In comparison, Bitcoin’s current block time average is just over nine minutes, with the average transaction fee at $8.50. This is a marked improvement over recent times, where fees reached as high as $50 per transaction. Changes being implemented on the Bitcoin network make it unlukunl such fees will return, but it is possible.

That’s not to say that Litecoin’s implementation is perfect. There is some debate over whether a faster block time results in a less-secure transaction system, though that hasn’t manifested in any major problems on the blockchain as of yet. Bitcoin does also have a wider array of purchasable goods and services online, so if you’re looking to buy something with your cryptocurrency, bitcoin does have an edge, even if it’s more expensive.

For the time being, Litecoin will be a faster and cheaper way of transacting online, even if there aren’t quite as many outlets available for its usage.

So which is best?

With most cryptocurrencies, the question of ‘which is best'(?) isn’t easy to answer. No cryptocurrency is a sure thing and every single one of them has potential and features that the others don’t. The best way to answer that question is to base it on what you want to use it for. In the case of Litecoin vs. Bitcoin, there are two key points that should be looked at. If you are looking to purchase for the long term, Bitcoin is your best bet, and if you’re looking to transfer and spend cryptocurrency on a regular basis, Litecoin is the better option.

That should be considered alongside a major caveat, however: Both cryptocurrencies are relatively reliable. Litecoin is a decent store of value in its own right, and Bitcoin isn’t as bad as it once was for transacting online. Indeed if you don’t mind the fees, confirmations aren’t as slow coming as you might imagine, even if Litecoin’s block time is far faster.

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Warriors coach tweeted message he meant to send privately, and blames iPhone X

When Apple unveiled the iPhone X, many people expected there to be a bit of a learning curve as people figured out how to navigate the home button-less interface. One of the people facing these problems is Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr.

CNET reports that Kerr was watching footage of the Houston Rockets when he accidentally sent out a tweet criticizing the NBA.

“It’s an embarrassment,” the tweet reads. “I think the league is so happy with all the scoring that it doesn’t want to enforce stuff like that.”

Kerr’s tweet was apparently referring to the multiple uncalled traveling violations shown within that segment. The tweet was deleted within a few seconds, but it was too late.

#JamesHarden is putting on a show!#Rockets

Tune in: @NBAonTNT pic.twitter.com/155wTPcoI3

— NBA (@NBA) February 2, 2018

Rather than blame the tweet on a hack or simply deny having posted it, Kerr came clean and admitted that he meant to send it as a private message to his friend. He blamed the accidental tweet on the difficulty of adjusting to his new iPhone X.

“I thought it was a direct message,” Kerr said. “My new iPhone is killing me. I got the X.”

He then proceeded to give an example of the troubles he was having with his new iPhone by recounting his misunderstanding of the phone’s speech-to-text feature while having dinner with his wife and daughter. Apparently, they were discussing wines and appetizers and the phone transcribed the conversation as a text message to his friend.

“I looked down at my phone and I have this entire text that’s ready to send to a random friend that is the exact conversation we just had,” Kerr explained. “I had no idea what I did. Obviously, I pushed a button that recorded our conversation and then printed it to become text and if I had hit ‘send’ I would have sent my friend the most random, bizarre … that was my first day with the phone.”

If you need help adjusting to your new iPhone X, then feel free to check out our guide to the iPhone X as well as our full review.

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What is PlayStation Plus and why do I need it?

Have you been considering a PlayStation Plus subscription? Perhaps you are wondering if it’s even worth the cost of admission. Maybe you just want to know what PlayStation Plus is. We have all your answers here.

What is it?

Today just about every console has some sort of online service. You can pretty much count on basic free online access. However, if you get on the other side of the subscription paywall you are privy to various benefits that are not available otherwise. PlayStation Plus is Sony’s subscription service for all things PlayStation. Let’s take a look at what you get with your subscription.

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Cloud game saving

One of the handy little perks of a PlayStation Plus subscription is the ability to save your games to the cloud. One way this can be of benefit is to save you some hard drive space. If you find storage to be at a premium on your system then the ability to move some of your saves to the cloud can free up some space for other things. In addition, you can also access your saves from anywhere. That way if you’re going to be playing on a different console your precious saved games are always ready for you without the need to carry around a USB drive.

Instant Game Collection

If you are looking to expand your game library, a PlayStation Plus subscription is a great way to do it. As a Plus subscriber, you will have access to a few free games every month. In addition to the two PS4 games every month you will also have the option of receiving games for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Once you have a game in your library it will remain there as long as you have an active PS Plus subscription.

Share play

Share play is a generous offering from Sony. It is essentially the modern day digital equivalent of having a friend come over and sit on your couch to play a game with you. With Share Play, you can do a few things. First, you can broadcast your gameplay to a friend or share screenshots. That in and of itself isn’t entirely revolutionary. The coolest part is that you can invite a friend to take control of your game or join you in multiplayer even if they don’t own a copy of that particular game.

Online Multiplayer

If you’re looking to play online multiplayer games then a PlayStation Plus subscription is pretty much your only option. There are some games that are free to play online even if you don’t have PS Plus. However, if you are looking to play the most popular top-tier titles then you are going to have to have a Plus subscription.

Deals Deals Deals

In addition to all other benefits mentioned thus far, with a PlayStation Plus subscription you will have exclusive access to some pretty deep discounts on PlayStation titles. I have seen some top games on sale for sometimes as much 80% off. That kind of savings has the potential to offset the cost of a PS Plus subscription in pretty short order.

The cost of a PlayStation Plus subscription can vary based on the method by which you buy it. For the most part, the best deal is to buy it a year at a time. At the time of this writing, a year of PS Plus is going to set you back $59.99. That may seem like a lot at first blush but if you take into consideration all the free games and savings you will have access to it pretty much pays for itself.

If you would like to give PlayStation Plus a test drive you can always try a 14-day free trial to see if it’s right for you. However, I can say from experience that if you have the money then it is worth every penny.

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Tesla will create ‘virtual power plant’ with 50,000 Australian homes

Tesla isn’t done bolstering Australia’s power grid just because its giant battery farm is up and running. South Australia premier Jay Weatherill has unveiled a partnership that will provide 5kW solar panels and Tesla Powerwall 2 batteries to “at least” 50,000 homes in a bid to create the largest-ever “virtual power plant,” where homes contribute their surplus energy to the grid. The move will theoretically stabilize the Australian state’s electricity infrastructure, reducing the blackouts and surging prices that have plagued the region in recent times.

The initiative will start with a trial in 1,100 public housing homes. The panels and batteries won’t carry any up-front charge for the participating households, South Australia said — instead, it’ll be funded both through selling electricity as well as through government funds. Officials will provide both a $2 million Australian ($1.6 million US) grant as well as a $30 million Australian ($23.8 million US) loan from the state’s Renewable Technology Funds.

Provided the effort goes forward as planned, it could provide more reliable power in an area where nearly half of electricity comes from wind farms. The government has also provided estimates showing that it could lower power bills by 30 percent for those who sign up. However, the timing is more than a little convenient. South Australia is holding its next election on March 17th, and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been attacking Weatherill’s strategy as a “reckless” experiment that led to out-of-control energy costs. The Tesla partnership is clearly meant to counter that kind of criticism — Weatherill can point to the hoped-for improvements and claim that South Australia is on the right path.

Via: Reuters

Source: Our Energy Plan

The best robot vacuums

By Liam McCabe

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter, where you can find reviews for the real world. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

After running more than 90 cleaning cycles with 14 of the most promising robot vacuums in 2017, we think the EcoVacs Deebot N79 is the best choice for most people who want a basic, affordable bot that can actually keep their floors tidy.

How we picked and tested

Our 2017 finalists (starting at the top, left to right): iLife A4s, Monoprice Strata Smartvac 2.0, Samsung Powerbot R7070, LG Hom-Bot Turbo+, iRobot Roomba 690, iRobot Roomba 960, EcoVacs Deebot N79, Eufy RoboVac 11. Photo: Liam McCabe

Since 2013, we’ve tracked 121 robot vacuum models, though many are now discontinued. We prioritize bots with these baseline specs:

• A brush roll. Robot vacuums don’t have much suction, so they need a brush roll to boost their cleaning performance.
• An edge-cleaning brush to collect debris around the bot.
• Reliable customer support.
• An average customer rating of four out of five stars or better.

The most important trait we looked for was continuous navigation—no getting stuck on cords, carpet fringe, or other obstacles. Over years of testing, we’ve found that as long as a robot keeps moving, it will do a good job keeping your floors tidy. We also looked for bots that offered the most powerful cleaning abilities or covered lots of ground on a single charge.

Beyond that, we favored quieter bots, simpler control schemes, Wi-Fi connectivity and smartphone-app control, availability of replacement parts, expected reliability based on the brand’s reputation and customer reviews, and the quality of customer service.

To test the bots, we closely monitored each vacuum for at least three whole-house cleaning sessions in a 1,000-square-foot condo with numerous area rugs, cords, and other obstructions. For the best bots, we repeated this test up to a dozen times, using different cleaning modes, obstacles, and dock positions.

We also enclosed each bot in a small area cluttered with obstacles and debris to give us an idea of how well it handled specific types of challenges. To learn about our testing process in detail, please see our full guide to robot vacuums.

Our pick: EcoVacs Deebot N79

Photo: Liam McCabe

The EcoVacs Deebot N79 is the most basic, affordable robot vacuum that actually works well. In our testing and research, the Deebot N79 was the most likely to complete a cleaning cycle on its own without getting stuck and waiting for a human to rescue it. It’s also one of the quietest robots we’ve tested, and we liked that you can control it via a smartphone app.

It’s not a particularly strong cleaner, especially when tasked with plush carpeting or long pet hairs. Also, its semi-random navigation system might miss patches of floor in larger homes. However, the two-hour battery life (among the longest we’ve seen) helps to offset those limitations through sheer persistence— if run a few times per week, we think the Deebot N79 is good enough to keep the floors tidy in most homes.

Runner-up: Eufy RoboVac 11

Photo: Liam McCabe

If the EcoVacs Deebot N79 goes out of stock or the price jumps, check out the Eufy RoboVac 11 instead. They are almost exactly the same robots, but the Eufy doesn’t have Wi-Fi or smartphone-app control, and it usually costs extra.

Apart from the connectivity, the same pros and cons to our main pick also apply to this Eufy. We’re more familiar with Eufy as a brand than with EcoVacs. Eufy is an offshoot of Anker, one of the more reliable and value-minded mobile-accessories brands of the past few years. In our experience, Anker offers great customer service.

Pricier but more durable: iRobot Roomba 690

Photo: Liam McCabe

The iRobot Roomba 690 costs a lot more than our main pick and performs about the same, but its extreme durability might save you some money in the long run. It’s a new bot with slick features like Wi-Fi connectivity and integration with Alexa voice commands, but it’s based on a tried-and-true design that we know will hold up over many years of use. It also comes from a brand with a reputation for supporting their products indefinitely.

In most homes, the Roomba 690 should work about as well as our main pick and runner-up. It uses a similar bump-and-run navigation system, though we’ve found that it’s slightly more prone to getting stuck on cords and area rugs. It also has a shorter battery life—just 90 minutes. But because it packs more cleaning power, it sucks up more debris with each pass, leaving you with a very clean floor.

Upgrade pick: iRobot Roomba 960

Photo: Liam McCabe

If you want the best of what robot vacuums have to offer, check out the iRobot Roomba 960. Given enough time, it can methodically clean an entire level of a house, no matter how large or small, without missing any patches of flooring. Thanks to its tangle-resistant brush rolls and agile trap-escaping tricks, it’s less likely to get stuck mid-cycle, and it’s a strong cleaner. The control scheme is simple, and it works with a smartphone app and Alexa voice commands.

The feature that sets the Roomba 960 apart from almost all of its competitors (at any price) is the navigation system. It’s built on the same base as the lower-priced Roomba models, but also uses a camera and an optical sensor to create a digital blueprint of your floorplan. This map allows the Roomba 960 to clean your floor in a logical, orderly fashion. And when the battery gets low, the bot can find its way to its dock, recharge itself, and then pick up exactly where it left off.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

Apple Says It’s ‘Looking Into’ Limited Reports of Incoming Call Delays on iPhone X

Apple is “looking into” a limited number of reports from users experiencing delays with incoming phone calls on the iPhone X, the company said in a statement, after the issues were highlighted by the Financial Times today.

The report, which links to a few discussions on the Apple Support Communities, notes that hundreds of customers have complained that the iPhone X’s display experiences delays in turning on for up to 10 seconds during incoming phone calls, preventing these users from tapping the Accept or Decline buttons.

Indian blog PiunikaWeb rounded up similar complaints on the Apple Support Communities in January, but it appears affected iPhone X owners have been experiencing this issue since shortly after the device launched in November.

Based on what we’ve read, it appears that affected iPhone X units begin ringing when they receive a phone call, but the display does not turn on to show the caller ID or answer button for several seconds—sometimes even longer than 10 seconds—which typically results in the call being missed.

The issue doesn’t appear to be fixed in the latest iOS 11.2.5 software update, and based on the complaints, it would appear that all versions back to at least iOS 11.2 are affected. Earlier versions of iOS 11 could be affected too.

MacRumors hasn’t been able to reproduce this issue, and we’ve seen only a handful of comments on our discussion forums related to the matter, but we did find a dozen more complaints from users across Twitter and Reddit. We’ve reached out to Apple to ask for an update when it has more information to share.

Apple is likely collecting data from affected customers so that its engineers can investigate the matter, as it routinely does with any potential hardware or software issues, so contact Apple Support if you are affected. The issue likely can and will be addressed in a future software update.

Apple has dealt with a number of iPhone X hardware and software issues in recent months, some more widespread than others, including a defect causing green lines to appear on some displays, temporary unresponsiveness in cold temperatures, and the rear-facing camera failing to autofocus.

Last week, reports broke that Apple has decided to delay some new features planned for iOS 12 until next year so that it can double down on the performance and quality of the iPhone and iPad operating system in the near term.

Related Roundup: iPhone XTag: Apple Support CommunitiesBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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For the first time, scientists discover exoplanets in a galaxy far, far away

Using a technique called microlensing, astrophysicists at the University of Oklahoma have confirmed the existence of exoplanets beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Not just one or two, either — the scientific team has estimated that there are multitudes of planets, ranging in sizes comparable from the Moon to Jupiter, in the galaxy known as RX J1131-1231.

Findings from the research were recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image above shows the galaxy at the center, surrounded by four quasars. It’s estimated there are several trillion planets in that central red dot.

Moreover, these appear to be “rogue” planets not circling a star in a conventional solar system but roaming free around the far-off galaxy.

“We are very excited about this discovery. This is the first time anyone has discovered planets outside our galaxy,” said OU professor Xinyu Dai. “These small planets are the best candidate for the signature we observed in this study using the microlensing technique.”

Einstein theorized that astronomers could use microlensing to observe distant objects using the gravity of stars that are directly between them and the Earth, Terry Oswalt of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University told CNET. “When a star in the foreground passes exactly between us and a background star, gravitational microlensing results in a perfectly circular ring of light — a so-called ‘Einstein ring,’” he said.

The massive gravitational pull of an object like a star causes space to bend around it, and light from a more distant object would curve around it as well, resulting in a magnifying effect.

The astrophysicists used observations from NASA’s Chandray X-ray Observatory, a space telescope controlled by the Smithsonian. They then analyzed the results using the OU Supercomputing Center. Microlensing has been used to discover thousands of planets within the Milky Way before, but this is a new frontier.

“This is an example of how powerful the techniques of analysis of extragalactic microlensing can be,” said OU researcher Eduardo Guerras. “This galaxy is located 3.8 billion light years away, and there is not the slightest chance of observing these planets directly, not even with the best telescope one can imagine in a science fiction scenario. However, we are able to study them, unveil their presence and even have an idea of their masses. This is very cool science.”

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‘Sea Hunter,’ a drone ship with no crew, just joined the U.S. Navy fleet

A prototype autonomous ship known as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV) has officially been transferred to the U.S. Navy from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) after a two-year testing and evaluation program. Named “Sea Hunter,” the Office of Naval Research will continue to develop the vessel from this point forward.

Although there’s no specific timetable for when the Sea Hunter would join active naval operations, the statement from DARPA indicated that it could happen as early as this year. The anti-submarine warfare vessel could be the first of an entirely new class of warship.

“[Sea Hunter] represents a new vision of naval surface warfare that trades small numbers of very capable, high-value assets for large numbers of commoditized, simpler platforms that are more capable in the aggregate,” said Fred Kennedy of DARPA. “The U.S. military has talked about the strategic importance of replacing ‘king’ and ‘queen’ pieces on the maritime chessboard with lots of ‘pawns.’”

The collaboration between the Navy and DARPA began in 2014, with the ship christened in April 2016. A rigorous series of open-water tests followed, including surveillance and mine counter-measures.

According to Newsweek, the ship got its name from the mission the Navy envisions for it — stalking foreign submarines at sea. It’s relatively cheap to build at $20 million, and it’s far less expensive to run than a similar manned vessel.

“This is an inflection point,” former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said in an interview with Reuters in 2016. “This is the first time we’ve ever had a totally robotic, trans-oceanic-capable ship.”

“I would like to see unmanned flotillas operating in the western Pacific and the Persian Gulf within five years,” he added.

The Navy hopes that ships of the future will be able to stay at sea for months at a time and travel thousands of miles without any crew. The Sea Hunter is currently a surveillance platform and has no weapons onboard. It’s 127 feet long and can reach speed of 27 knots, using cameras and radar to track its location and spot other ships.

Work went on to emphasize that if robot ships like Sea Hunter were outfitted with weapons in the future, there would always be a human at the controls. “There’s no reason to be afraid of a ship like this,” he said.

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A.I. perfectly predicted last year’s Super Bowl score. What happens to betting?

Competitive sports are ultimately numbers games. Whether it’s a gymnast racking up points on a balance beam, a tennis player acing her opponent, or a football team scoring on a last second Hail Mary, all matches are won and lost by numbers. There are upsets, comebacks, and situations when the losing team still seems to outperform the other — but, even then, victory distills into digits.

As such, it’s obvious that many sports lend themselves nicely to the type of mathematical analyses that let keen-eyed statisticians predict outcomes — maybe even exact scores — just by crunching a bunch of numbers. After all, that’s the basis of sports betting, and it’s helped baseball managers craft winning teams on a tight budget just by considering little more than batting average, runs batted in, and stolen bases.

But what happens when artificial intelligence algorithms are used to do what they do best — pick out patterns in data that human eyes typically can’t catch? Could these algorithms undermine the “house” and turn sports betting on its head?

The prediction predicament

Athletic events are chock full of juicy data that A.I. developers would probably love to feed to their algorithms. A power forward’s field goal percentage, a running back’s rushing yards, and a midfielder’s assists are obvious example of this kind of data.

But there are other, less apparent data that can give a more nuanced and complete overview, for example, a player’s “sweet spot” (where he most often makes his shots) or the paths and distance a given player travels during a game.

But not all sports are created equal when it comes to quantity and quality of data. Some, like baseball, readily release their players’ stats. Tennis organizations, on the other hand, collect high-resolution datasets that include things as specific as ball trajectory throughout a match, making the sport rife for predictive analysis.

If these organization didn’t keep their hi-res data under lock and key, tennis would be prime for predictive analytics. But for algorithms to identify patterns and provide actionable outputs, they need access to abundant data.

“A lot of the early sports betting in the US using computer algorithms and predictive models was focused on stuff like college football and basketball,” Adam Kucharski, a researcher and author of The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling, tells Digital Trends. “They’d have so many matches and each match had so many scoring events, which gave you a really big data set so you could get a good understanding of what was driving a team performance. And then you’d have enough games throughout the rest of the season to put that insight into practice.”

Access to data isn’t the only constraint keeping A.I. from fully infiltrating betting. The circumstances surrounding this data also needs to be relatively consistent. And since players and team rosters often change from season to season, finding patterns can become difficult, if not futile.

Early sports betting [used] computer algorithms and predictive models focused on stuff like college football and basketball.

Furthermore, sports aren’t just about the stats. There are plenty of unseen influencers that can bring a team to victory. Player dynamics, for example, can cause certain squads to “click” and play well together, despite the data suggesting otherwise. And you can’t trust stats to elucidate a defensive player’s overall skill.

“In some team sports, very good players don’t do much that’s measurable,” Kucharski says. “A very good player might just get into a good position. Tackle rates won’t show that. It’s their positioning and intuitive behavior that is having an influence.”

That’s why Kucharski found that most betting institutions combine data-driven predictions with human behavior and intuition. The most accurate prediction might lie somewhere between raw data and input from the crowd.

“You can only shove things into an algorithm if they’re measurable,” he adds. “It might be that there are subtleties or other combinations of factors that humans can spot and process patterns in which is much harder to explicitly put into computing algorithms.”

The business of betting

There are a handful of companies looking to capitalize on A.I. in betting, such as Stratagem: a London-based startup that’s pairing deep neural networks with dozens of human analysts to predict the outcome of soccer matches, hoping to make money with wagers along the way.

Interestingly, one of the best examples of how A.I. can influence betting doesn’t rely exclusively on machine intelligence. Instead, it uses the technology as a guide to help humans leverage their collective brainpower more effectively and use it to make more accurate predictions. That’s the approach at Unanimous A.I., a startup that leverages A.I. and “swarm intelligence” to make astoundingly accurate predictions.

The startup made headlines last February when users on its platform, UNU, successfully predicted the Super Bowl results down to the exact score. Then they predicted eleven out of fifteen Oscar winners, besting the New York Times’ film buffs by eighteen percent. Before that, UNU performed an even more unlikely prediction by placing the winners of the Kentucky Derby in their exact order, a feat known as a superfecta, which last year came with 540 to 1 odds. For comparison, none of the experts at Churchill Downs predicted a superfecta. Meanwhile, Unanimous A.I. founder Louis Rosenberg turned his $20 bet into $11,000.

But Rosenberg isn’t in it for the money or the sport of it. In fact, he admits he wasn’t even much of a sports fan before his company started making these predictions.

Adam Glanzman/Getty Images

Bill Greene/Getty Images

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Nick Wosika/Getty Images)

Getty Images

“For us it’s always fun to do these sports predictions,” Rosenberg tells Digital Trends. “But we get involved with sports predictions because it’s a great test bed to quantify intelligence.”

Rosenberg is a proponent of the hive mind, or human swarm intelligence: the idea that a group of people working together has more intellect than an individual working alone. This isn’t just crowdsourced knowledge, Rosenberg says, but systems that are interconnected with feedback loops to manifest emergent intelligences.

In UNU, Rosenberg has created a platform that enables users to collaborate on predictions in real-time by moving a magnet to pull a “puck” towards their desired answer. By running these swarm trials and comparing their predictions to the real world, Rosenberg and his team hope to get enough statistically significant data to refine their platform and help make predictions even more accurate.

“For us it’s always fun to do these sports predictions.”

“We’ve shown we can take average [sports] fans, create them as a swarm intelligence, and amplify their intelligence to make them very good at sports forecasts,” Rosenberg says.

In multiple studies, researchers have used UNU to test the theory of swarm intelligence — with tantalizing results.

In one study conducted by researchers at Oxford University, American soccer fans were asked to predict outcomes in the English Premier League. When they acted as individuals, their average accuracy was about 55 percent. When they collaborated as a swarm, their accuracy jumped to 72 percent.

“This wasn’t just a single victory,” Rosenberg says, “It was fifty games over five weeks!”

The A.I. aspect of UNU comes in as algorithms at the back end. These algorithms monitor how users engage in the platform, whether their interactions display confidence, overconfidence, or uncertainty, and tries to guide the cursor towards the prediction that best represents their combined knowledge.

“The people possess the knowledge, wisdom, insight, and intuition, and the A.I. algorithms figure out the optimal way to combine their diverse views as they’re working together as a swarm,” Rosenberg says.

If you’re wondering (and we know you are) Unanimous A.I. ran a swarm for this Super Bowl. According to the swarm’s predictions, the Patriots will win by between 4 and 6 points, with the game’s total point count exceeding 48.5.

Whether or not this prediction is accurate, profits garnered from sports betting aren’t part of UNU’s business plan. Nonetheless, the company’s approach of combining algorithms with human intelligence in many ways mirrors the one used by betting syndicates and startups like Stratagem. So, although A.I. may someday power the sports gambling world, humans still seem to make the best bets.

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Man pleads guilty to distributing over 40,000 counterfeit Apple products

PThe United States Department of Justice has announced that Jianhua “Jeff” Li, a 43-year-old Chinese national living in the United States on a student visa, has pleaded guilty to being part of a counterfeit ring involving fake Apple products.

The case is part of a joint operation between the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. The investigation has been ongoing since 2015, when Li was first arrested.

Starting in 2009, Li and his compatriots, Andreina Becerra, Roberto Volpe, and Rosario LaMarca, helped smuggle more than 40,000 counterfeit products, including fake iPhones and iPads into the U.S. In addition, the smuggling operation also included forged documents pertaining to Apple logos and trademarks. Li is estimated to have earned about $1.1 million from the sales of the fake products to customers who thought they were purchasing legitimate Apple hardware.

The Verge reports that the bank accounts relating to Li’s operation were based out of New Jersey and Florida. From there, Li would transfer the money to an account Italy. Then it would be sent to multiple accounts across the globe as a way of protecting the smuggling operation.

The size of the operation remains difficult to estimate. While it is known that Li received more than $1 million in revenue from the illicit sales, it is not certain how much his associates earned. Nor how much, if any, of the money went to Li’s family in China. Investigators are currently trying to determine whether or not this operation had any ties to the large-scale counterfeit rings that operate in China. The high demand and high price of Apple’s products means that they are a profitable market for Chinese counterfeiters.

Li was charged with, and pleaded guilty, to one count of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods and labels and to smuggle goods into the U.S., and one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods. Li’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for May. However, LaMarca was sentenced last July to 37 months in prison. The other members of the smuggling operation are still awaiting sentencing.

Given Li’s status as a Chinese citizen, it is possible that he will be deported upon the completion of his sentence.

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