Stanford simulator predicts brain swelling to guide surgeons
Surgeons have been cutting out parts of the skulls of patients suffering from brain trauma for a very long time. But a new simulation tool developed by a team of researchers for Stanford U and the University of Oxford will help make the procedure a lot safer. Decompressive craniectomy, as the method is called, gives the swelling brain space to expand in order to save a person’s life after a head injury. However, it could also lead to complications. See, when the brain bulges out of a hole, its axons (or the fragile threadlike parts of its nerve cells) have the tendency to stretch and break. This tool can minimize potential complications by telling surgeons the optimal place to cut and how large the hole should be, depending on the type of injury.
To develop the tool, the team studied medical scans showing the amount of swelling for different types of brain injuries. They then created mathematical estimates that can predict how an injury would affect different parts of the organ. Once they were done designing the system, then ran different scenarios through the simulation and found that you’ll see serious damage if axons expand near or above 30 percent. The resulting simulation, by the way, displays the most affected parts of the brain in red, areas that sustained mild damage in green and safe parts in blue. This gives surgeons a very visual guide to decide the best place to perform the decompressive craniectomy.
The team knows their creation is in its very early stages, and they’re hoping that surgeons could pitch in and help them develop it further. For now, you can read more about their study on Physical Review Letters, or watch the video below.
Source: Stanford University
NYT: Yahoo reworked its malware scanner for email surveillance
Following a Reuters report that in 2015 Yahoo scanned customer emails for US surveillance, the New York Times has followed up with details from anonymous sources of its own. Although Yahoo responded a day later claiming the initial report was “misleading,” the NYT sourced unnamed government officials claiming the company modified a system used to scan all incoming email for malware that stored matching messages and made them available to the FBI.
In this version of the events, Yahoo was responding to a court order under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that governs the PRISM program exposed by Edward Snowden’s leaks. Although it’s unclear exactly what they were looking for, the court order targeted code believed to be used “uniquely” by a foreign terrorist organization.
Reuters has followed up with another report of its own covering similar details. Citing unnamed former Yahoo employees, it says security staff disabled the program when they found it, and it had not been re-enabled before former top security officer Alex Stamos left the company for Facebook last year. It also noted a statement from Senator Ron Wyden, expressing concern that the NSA may have expanded its targeting under Section 702 from email addresses and other identifiers to other content without notifying the public.
Yahoo declined to provide further details on the program or what details of the initial report were misleading, but between these revelations and news of a massive 2014 security breach, this probably isn’t over yet.
Source: New York Times, Reuters
Cult classic ‘Voodoo Vince’ returns to Xbox next year
Voodoo Vince is coming back. The quirky platformer set in New Orleans and starring a voodoo doll who inflicts pain on himself to hurt enemies (because voodoo) started life on the first Xbox. But because it was an Xbox exclusive not many people played it despite how vocal its fans were. That was in 2003 when Microsoft was publishing just about anything in an effort to build a software library, regardless of how small the new console’s install base was.
As it turns out, the game wouldn’t work as a backwards compatible title on Xbox 360 due to “some convoluted custom code.” So for the past few months, Kauzlaric has been tinkering away at Voodoo Vince: Remastered. As you might expect, when the game comes out in “early 2017” for Windows 10 and Xbox One, it’ll run in 1080p at 60 FPS, support widescreen TVs and have overhauled graphics. But altering much else would be sacrilege, it sounds like.
While the Xbox team’s publishing strategy has changed pretty dramatically since then (Gears of War! Forza! Halo!), lead developer, and current creative director of first party publishing at Microsoft, Clayton Kauzlaric hasn’t forgotten about his team’s first 3D platformer. Over on Xbox Wire, he recounts the development period and the 13 years that’ve passed since the game hit retail.
“The gameplay is mostly untouched though, that was important to me,” Kauzlaric writes. “Vince moves, animates and controls exactly like he did in 2003. You can just see a lot more detail in his world when he moves through our twisted version of New Orleans ad the Bayou.”
And the project already has a high profile fan: Xbox chief Phil Spencer. For years he’s said that it’s his favorite game because of who he was playing it with when it first came out.
“I have two daughters, they’re 19 and 16 now, but there’s a game called Voodoo Vince that was the first game I finished with my youngest daughter on my lap and my oldest daughter next to me,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2015. “We were all kind of solving the puzzles together. For me, games are about the memories as much as the accomplishments. So I’ll always remember finishing [it] with my daughters.”
So, Blinx: The Timesweeper fans, there’s still hope that your favorite game starring a time-controlling feline could get another life.
So great, I’m already playing, special memories. Announcing Voodoo Vince: Remastered, Coming Early 2017 https://t.co/wxrxO06XXG
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) October 5, 2016
Source: Xbox Wire
‘Skyrim,’ ‘Fallout 4’ to offer user mods and PS4 Pro support
Bethesda and Sony have kissed and made up. Who benefits from that corporate make-out session? You, because mod support is en route for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition, according to a post on Bethesda.net. Skyrim mods will show up first, but there isn’t a timetable for when that will actually happen.
“We are excited to finally get modding to our PlayStation fans who have supported us for so long,” the post reads. “Modding has been an important part of our games for over 10 years, and we hope to do even more in the coming year for all our players, regardless of platform.”
However despite that ambiguity, when the remaster launches on October 28th it will run at native 4K resolution on the PlayStation 4 Pro — just a bit ahead of the console’s November 10th release date. If you’re planning to roam the irradiated Commonwealth in Fallout 4 with all the benefits PS4 Pro offers, you’re going to have to wait a bit. Bethesda teases that 4K rendering along with better lighting and graphics are planned for Fallout 4, but that those won’t arrive until work is finished on Skyrim.
If you were hoping for dragon-replacing, flying My Little Ponies, it sounds like your luck’s run out: Any mods can only use pre-existing assets from the games. Meaning, you can only make stuff with what’s already available in the base game. It effectively neuters a vast majority of either game’s more hilarious user creations like wrestler Macho Man Randy Savage replacing Fallout 4’s towering Deathclaw enemies, among others.
Source: Bethesda
CIA claims it can predict some social unrest up to 5 days ahead
Back in March 2015, the CIA chief began setting up a new office, the Directorate of Digital Innovation, to integrate the latest tech into the agency’s data-gathering workflow along with boosting the country’s cyber defense. According to its director, the department has helped the CIA as a whole improve its “anticipatory intelligence.” Speaking at the Next Tech event yesterday, Deputy Director for Digital Innovation Andrew Hallman noted that, in some instances, they’ve been able to forecast social unrest and societal instability in other countries by as much as three to five days out.
That “anticipatory intelligence” has been boosted through a combination of algorithms and analytics to predict the flow of illicit goods or extremists, according to Defense One. Deep and machine learning makes sense of seemingly disparate data, helping analysts see patterns to anticipate national security threats. And then they apply it to the world.
“What we’re trying to do within a unit of my directorate is leverage what we know from social sciences on the development of instability, coups and financial instability, and take what we know from the past six or seven decades and leverage what is becoming the instrumentation of the globe,” Hallman said during yesterday’s event.
They don’t just pore through the intelligence community’s own proprietary information, either. The Digital Innovation department has been using more and more open source data sets with specialists who can combine public and agency information to draw more nuanced conclusions, which CIA director John Brennan called a tremendous advantage.
Combined with their increasing surveillance of social media, the agency is clearly looking to gobble up as much information as possible. With tech’s best data-parsing tools, they hope to get days of lead time to prepare for riots and social decay across the globe. But how successful they are and how far ahead they can accurately anticipate it is uncertain.
Source: Defense One
‘Pokémon Go’ will add catch bonuses to make the grind worthwhile
As Niantic Labs keeps tweaking things to hold onto its Pokémon Go player base, it has revealed another new feature coming to the augmented reality game. Currently, player activities like catching Pokémon can level them up towards earning medals that toss off points, but not much else. Soon, there will be a catch bonus for earned medals that level up based on the type of Pokémon caught.
It seems like a way to make low-level grinding (perhaps with that $35 Pokémon Go Plus dongle) pay off visibly and as the post title puts it, increase the odds of catching rare Pokémon. The only problem? At least judging by the responses, players are really looking for ways to improve other parts of the game, like tracking monsters, or battling and training in gyms. Niantic previously said it would “rebalance” training battles, but that is apparently also still in the works.
Source: Pokémon Go
Google Pixel XL vs Nexus 6P first look
Google has now taken the wraps off the Pixel XL, leaving behind the Nexus family in favor of a new direction that sees Google more directly compete against Samsung and Apple in the smartphone hardware game. The new Pixel XL brings a lot to the table, but how does it compare to its predecessor?
Let’s take a look as we put the the Pixel XL up against the Huawei-built Nexus 6P in this quick comparison.
Aesthetically speaking, the Pixel XL and Nexus 6P have little in common in common, other than perhaps the use of metallic unibody designs and the circular fingerprint scanner found on the rear.
The Google Pixel XL offers up a unibody metal design that features a unique area of glass of the rear that starts around the fingerprint reader and stretches to the top. A subtle “G” can be found at the bottom, with no oversized logos or markings in sight. The front of the phone is completely devoid of buttons, with just a single speaker at the top middle, a sensor below, and the front-facing camera found to the left. Below the display is a pretty sizable chin, where honestly we would have liked to have seen a secondary speaker.
See also: Google Pixel and Pixel XL hands on34
Turning to the Nexus 6P, the Nexus is a bit larger and heavier than the Pixel XL, but it is a bit slimmer for what it is worth. Just like the Pixel, the phone is a unibody metallic device, but instead of the partially glass back, the 6P instead offers a unique camera “wedge.” Otherwise, the back is pretty plain with simple Nexus branding and a circular fingerprint scanner in the middle. One area that the Nexus 6P stands triumphantly over the Pixel is the front-side, thanks to its dual speaker configuration.
At the end of the day, both phones take an otherwise ordinary metallic design and add a little extra flair. With the 6P, it’s the camera bump. With the Pixel, it’s a half-glass backing. We suspect the Pixel’s design will be met with split reception, similar to the 6P before it, but really it comes down to personal preference as to which design is more appealing.
Both the Pixel XL and Nexus 6P offer QHD AMOLED displays, though this time around Google has shrunk the size down to 5.5-inches from the 5.7-inch size of the 6P. The smaller size means the Pixel XL will have slightly higher PPI, but overall you’re looking at pretty similar viewing experiences with all the characteristics you’d expect from an AMOLED panel.
Performance favors the newer phone, which is expected. The Pixel XL features the brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, paired with 4GB RAM. Of course, the Nexus 6P is no slouch with its Snapdragon 810 and 3GB RAM, either. Though the processing package isn’t the latest or greatest anymore, it is more than capable of providing a great Android experience.
If you’re looking for plenty of storage options, the Pixel XL will probably disappoint a little, as your choices are between either 32GB or 128GB. In contrast, the 6P offered 32, 64, and 128GB configurations. Neither phone offers expandable memory, but that’s pretty much expected from Google. It is worth noting that the Pixel XL does include free unlimited storage of videos and pictures at full resolution.
Battery life will likely be fairly similar between these two phones, with both offering 3450mAh battery configurations. Both phones also feature quick charging and USB type-C. Whether the Snapdragon 821 offers any noticeable battery optimizations over the Snapdragon 810 remains unseen, but we’ll be sure to put the phone through its paces once we get our review unit.
The Nexus 6P completely raised the bar on what to expect from the Nexus family in terms of camera performance. Offering less megapixels in favor of larger ones, the 6P offered a 12MP shooter with f/2.0 aperture that prioritized low light performance. The end result was a pretty solid camera overall.
See also: Shootout: How good is the new Pixel XL camera?50
A similar story plays out with the Pixel XL, which features a 12.MP shooter with f/2.0 aperture and 1.55 μm sized pixels. On paper, this is a very similar configuration to the 6P. While we won’t be able to definitively say how the cameras compare until we’ve done a full review, it is worth noting that DxOmark has rated the Pixel XL with an 89 — beating out the Nexus 6P, Galaxy S7, and the iPhone 7 and receiving the highest mark from the company to date.
Like the Nexus 6P, at the heart of the Pixel XL is a stock Android experience. That said, Google has been less shy about adding on special features this time around. Out of the box the Pixel XL features Android 7.1 Nougat with the new Pixel launcher preloaded. Swiping up from the dock brings up the app drawer and circles are more the motif for this launcher. Another Google G is in plain view at the top, opening up a familiar Google Now search bar.
But the real star of the show is Google Assistant, now baked right into the OS. Previously found within the Allo application, the latest iteration offers a greatly improved experience over what you’d find with Google Now. Asking it contextual questions yields clear, accurate answers. For example, I asked Assistant to play me wrestler TJ Perkins’ entrance from WWE. Once I said the request, Youtube appeared and played the video in question.
The fast, fluid stock experience is alive and well on the Nexus 6P as well, with Android 7.0 Nougat currently being the latest version on offer. While the experience is largely identical, Pixel Launcher and the baked in Google Assistant are not part of the formula here. While it’s possible these new features will come to the Nexus family in some form down the road, for now these special extras remain something you’ll only be able to experience with a Pixel.
In many ways, the Pixel XL and Nexus 6P share a lot of the same DNA, despite offering different looks and different overall approaches. After all, they both run mostly stock Android software and have been built with Google’s influence. Still, the Pixel represents a big leap forward with Google not just influencing the software and hardware, but instead fully controlling it.
Pricing is another area where the two phones greatly differ. While the Nexus 6P could be had for just $399, the Google Pixel XL’s premium specs and features start at $769. It remains a matter of debate whether the Pixel XL offers enough improvements to justify that price hike, but it’s clear that Google wants to send a very different message with the Pixel family than it did with the Nexus line before it.
See also: Google Pixel & Pixel XL vs the competition101
The Pixel XL is an evolution of the Nexus formula, a device where Google doesn’t just control the software experience, but has equal power over the hardware. For Google fans looking for a phone built from the ground up with Google’s intentions and full blessing, it doesn’t get any better than that.
Theranos is closing its labs and Wellness Centers
Theranos is making some big changes going forward, company chief Elizabeth Holmes has revealed in an open letter. While the embattled blood-testing firm isn’t closing shop completely, it will shut down its clinical labs and Wellness Centers, as well as let 340 out of its 790 employees go. The layoffs will affect people who’ve been with the company for years, working for its establishments in Arizona, California and Pennsylvania. Going forward, Theranos will focus on the 95-pound device it debuted in August called “miniLab,” which she said can detect diseases, including Zika, with a drop of your blood.
Holmes said:
“Our ultimate goal is to commercialize miniaturized, automated laboratories capable of small-volume sample testing, with an emphasis on vulnerable patient populations, including oncology, pediatrics, and intensive care.”
A team within the company is already working on securing FDA clearances, partnerships and pursuing publication in scientific journals, the open letter added.
Theranos, once a promising company that reached a $9 billion valuation, promised blood test results with just a fingerprick. A series of Wall Street Journal reports, however, changed everything. They revealed that the company barely used its proprietary technology, relying mostly on traditional blood tests instead. Further, a lot of its results turned out to be unreliable and inaccurate that the company had to void two years’ worth of blood test reports.
Several agencies looked into the company’s practices, including the FDA, which found issues with its quality control procedures and the small vials called “nanotainers” it used to store blood samples. Since all these came out, the company’s been on a downward spiral. It lost its partnership with Walgreens, which used to offer its services and served as Theranos’ main source of business. COO and president Sunny Balwani retired, and founder Elizabeth Holmes was banned from running a lab for two years.
Despite all those issues, the company introduced the miniLab, which is different from its older proprietary machine called Edison, at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry in August. The convention’s attendees were expecting Holmes to explain Theranos’ situation and to shed more light on its controversial fingerprick-testing technique. They didn’t expect her to debut a brand new device in the midst of what the company is going through. But she did, and it has now become Theranos’ focus.
Via: Marketwatch
Source: Theranos, The Wall Street Journal
Washington state orders Valve to end ‘Counter-Strike’ gambling
For Washington state, it’s not enough for Valve to distance itself from gun skin gambling in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive — it wants the company to put an end to the practice. The state’s Gambling Commission has ordered Valve to “stop allowing the transfer” of gun skins for gambling through Steam. The gaming giant has until October 14th to explain how it’s obeying Washington gambling laws — if it ignores the request or can’t prove that it’s squeaky-clean, it might face “additional civil or criminal action.”
To the Commission, this is about reining in out-of-control, dangerous behavior. Skin bets represent a “large, unregulated black market” that burns unsuspecting players, Commissioner Chris Stearns says. The regulator is particularly worried about underage gamblers, who don’t face the barriers to entry that they do in the real world. It notes that one site, CSGO Lounge, has made over $1 billion so far this year.
When we reached out to Valve, it reiterated its attempt to separate itself from gambling sites. The developer has sent 40 cease-and-desist notices, it says, and a federal judge recently tossed a lawsuit targeting Valve over the issue. You can read the statement below. However, the company might not have much choice but to step up its response. If the Commission is convinced that Valve is enabling shady gambling, it’s going to crack down — it might not accept Valve’s stance at face value. There’s no indication that the Commission will ban gun skins outright, but it could easily restrict their availability.
“Back in July we posted about third-party gambling sites (http://store.steampowered.com/news/22883/). Our position has not changed and so far we’ve sent cease and desist notices to over 40 sites. On a somewhat related note, a federal judge in Washington recently dismissed a case associated with this subject where Valve was named as a defendant (https://www.law360.com/classaction/articles/848361/game-platform-beats-suit-over-teenage-gambling-).”
Via: Polygon
Source: Washington State Gambling Commission (PDF)
Reuters: Twitter seeks a sale decision by October 27th
Twitter’s flat growth and falling profits made for a dim outlook until a few weeks ago when sources close to the social media platform said that Google, Salesforce and other tech luminaries were looking to buy it. The company’s stock jumped 20 percent that day, and speculation has continued as to which would be the best buyer. But it seems time is of the essence: Twitter wants to conclude sale deliberations before October 27th, the day it reports its third quarter earnings, sources told Reuters.
Binding acquisition offers are due in two weeks, the sources noted. Salesforce is in the running, which could mine Twitter’s data for business intel, while Disney might make a bid to use its social media platform to boost outreach for its programming. While Google was considered a prominent potential buyer, separate sources told Recode that the search giant won’t make a bid. Apple isn’t likely to enter the fray either.
But it’s possible that even Twitter isn’t solid on what Twitter wants to do. Bloomberg reported today that three head executives are split: CEO Jack Dorsey wants to remain independent, co-founder Ev Williams wants to sell, with chief financial officer Anthony Noto stepped in to seize more control of the company amid Dorsey’s passive leadership.
But this whole process might not even result in a sale, Reuters’ sources cautioned. Regardless, concluding negotiations with any buyer before October 27th is an incredibly aggressive deadline. At the very least, it will likely define where Twitter is going before it has to report what is likely its 12th consecutive quarter without producing net profit as a public company.
Source: Reuters
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