Remember Google’s program that learned to beat champion Go players? It’s been comprehensively beaten by its successor, which learned the game from scratch. AlphaGo Zero, which worked without any game history data, beat the original AlphaGo in a 100 match series by a margin of 100 games to zero. Go has always been a challenge […]
Sony has licensed a mini PS4 gamepad for children who struggle with the full-size controller. The Mini Wired Gamepad is 40 percent smaller than the standard DualShock 4. The “Mini Wired Gamepad, produced by Hori, is a single curved rectangle rather than the inverted bunny ears of the standard controller. Sony says that makes it […]
Activision wants to arrange mismatches in online games so that the less experienced player spends more on microtransactions. That’s not a conspiracy theory but rather a directly stated goal of a system it’s just patented. It’s arguable whether this should be considered to its credit or not, but there’s absolutely no subtlety or euphemisms in […]
A collision between two neutron stars – a kilonova – has been detected for the first time. It took place 130 million years ago and produced gravitational waves, rupturing spacetime in the way predicted by Einstein. The collision also produced gold and platinum, a process that was the accepted theory for those elements but only […]
Facebook is paying to train British schoolchildren as “digital safety ambassadors.” They’ll help their peers deal with online bullying and similar issues. The company has offered £1 million (approximately US $1.33 million) in total funding for the United Kingdom’s 4,500 schools. The recipients will be trained through two schemes already run by charities. One, The […]
The BBC is making a new series of the radio drama of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It will be based on the sixth book in the “trilogy” plus unpublished Douglas Adams material. The series will be titled “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase” and will largely be an adaptation of the […]
An unsent message on an Australian man’s phone has been accepted as a legally valid will. A court made a rare exemption to a normally tightly interpreted law on what counts as a will. The man took his own life and had not written a will on paper. That situation would normally have been governed […]
Amazon has finally produced a waterproof Kindle. The new Oasis model remains the most high-end Kindle, albeit painfully expensive. It costs $250 (down from $290 for the original Oasis), so it certainly isn’t an impulse buy or a stocking stuffer. The most visible change, besides an all-metal casing, is a seven inch screen. That’s the […]
Apple is working on self-tightening bands for the Apple Watch. Despite getting a patent, it hasn’t actually decided how it will work. While putting on a watch isn’t exactly life’s most cumbersome task, an automatically tightening band would allow more precise fitting than using a buckle and holes. (That said, Apple did recently sell a […]
Independent benchmarking has dispelled the theory that Apple deliberately slows down existing iPhones when a new model is released. While it’s normally preceded by phrases like “I’m sure I’m imagining it, but…”, it’s certainly not uncommon to see people mentioning their handset feels like it’s running slower when a new release is imminent. Indeed, Google […]