Indian Coast Guard released select list II for the posts of Asst Commandant - 01/2020 Batch.
Sunday, December 29, 2019
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner talks about the company's evolution after acquisition by Microsoft, integration with Outlook and other Microsoft products, and more (Jordan Novet/CNBC)
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner talks about the company's evolution after acquisition by Microsoft, integration with Outlook and other Microsoft products, and more — - Microsoft closed its $26.2 billion LinkedIn acquisition three years ago this month. — LinkedIn has done some things …
Ars To-Be-Read: Five books we’re most excited to read in 2020
Enlarge (credit: iStock / Getty Images Plus)
Update: Ars staffers are still off enjoying the last bits of winter break, with many likely enjoying some extra time for gaming or catching up on various TV series. But if your preferred downtime instead involves a good book, we're resurfacing this look at some of the top titles on our To Be Read list for 2020. This story originally ran on November 15, 2019, and it appears unchanged below.
As "best of 2019" lists flood in, we're looking toward the future—the literary future, to be precise. After another solid year of reading in 2019, we're excited for new releases to come in the early months of 2020. Below are some of our most anticipated reads that you can get your hands on within the first three months of 2020.
Hugo-award-winner N.K. Jemisin will be releasing the first novel in a new series in March, while German author-songwriter Marc-Uwe Kling has a satirical novel about our addiction to convenience coming out in English for the first time. We know setting New Year's resolutions can be hard, but we think you'll want to put all five of these upcoming releases at the top of your TBR list.
Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
It’s The Jons 2019!
Happy New Year! It’s been another wild and wacky ride of a year in the tech world: breakthroughs and disgraces, triumphs and catastrophes, cryptocurrencies and starships, the ongoing rise of utopian clean energy and dystopian cyberpunk societies, and most of all, the ongoing weirding of the whole wide world.
In other words it was another perfect year for The Jons, the annual award which celebrates dubious tech-related achievements, named, in an awe-inspiring fit of humility, after myself. We’ve got quite a lineup for you this year, folks. So let’s get to it! With very little further ado, I give you: the fuftg annual Jon Awards for Dubious Technical Achievement!
(The Jons 2015) (The Jons 2016) (The Jons 2017) (The Jons 2018)
THE CATLIKE FINANCIAL REFLEXES AWARD FOR LANDING ON YOUR FEET AFTER UNMITIGATED DISASTER
To Adam Neumann, who presided over the spectacular rise and even more spectacular fall from grace of WeWork, which proudly launched its proposed IPO this year and promptly saw most of its valuation (and its cash) disintegrate in a sea of eyebrow-raising stories about delusional irresponsibility and the harsh realities of actual business. However, give Neumann credit: stories may have made him sound like a potsmoking surfer dude who lived in a hallucinatory fantasyland, but — unlike his employees, whose dreams of IPO wealth were suddenly and completely shattered — he managed to walk away from the business he drove nearly into the ground with a reported $1.7 billion windfall.
THE EVERYBODY’S BEST FRIEND AWARD FOR INSPIRING NOSEBLEED VALUATIONS AND ASPIRATIONAL POSTERS EVERYWHERE
To Masayoshi Son, whose widely announced dreams of a $108 billion Vision Fund II turned into the relative nightmare of something “far smaller” — but still has his surreal, dreamlike slide decks to fall back on. After all, “SoftBank works to comfort people in their sorrow.”
THE WE MAY AS WELL JUST GIVE HIM A LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR ELON DOING HIS ELON THING
To — obviously — Elon Musk, who actually had a really good year: Tesla stock got ‘so high‘ it brushed the price at which he previously announced he would take it private (he didn’t); SpaceX launched Starlink, a “very big deal“; and he was acquitted of defamation for calling a complete stranger a pedophile on twitter. OK, so he also announced Starship should reach orbit by this coming March, and smashed the Cybertruck’s allegedly unbreakable windows onstage at its unveiling, but still, a good year! See you in 2020, Elon.
THE IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T CONVINCE, TELL AN EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS TALE AWARD FOR RISIBLE SATOSHI NAKAMOTO CLAIMS
To Craig Wright, who has long claimed in the face of mocking industrywide disbelief to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, and especially for his claims that, now work with me here, the keys 1 million of Satoshi’s bitcoin were put in a “Tulip Trust” by a long-deceased collaborator and will be delivered to him by a “bonded courier” on January 1st 2020, i.e. a few days from now. The judge he told this to was, unsurprisingly, spectacularly unconvinced, saying “Dr. Wright’s demeanor did not impress me as someone who was telling the truth” and also reproached him for his “willful and bad faith pattern of obstructive behavior.” You don’t say.
THE DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, BUT ONLY IF THEY’RE ACTUALLY DEAD AWARD FOR LEAVING A TRAIL OF CRYPTOCURRENCY CHAOS IN ONE’S WAKE
To my fellow Canadian Gerald William Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, who apparently stole and/or lost essentially all of his customers’ money, spending much of it on “luxury goods and real estate,” before his death in Mumbai last year. “But Jon,” you say, “how does this quality for a 2019 Jon Award?” Because the many thousands who lost money are now demanding an exhumation to determine that the body in Cotten’s grave is, in fact, Cotten. As for the surviving founder, he’s “a reported ex-con who served 18 months in a federal U.S. prison for identity theft, bank fraud and credit card fraud.” Is this the end of this crazy story? …Well, probably yes. But in the world of cryptocurrencies, which reliably gives us the most jawdropping Jons, who can say for sure?
THE I’VE SEEN THE FUTURE BABY AND IT’S PRETTY CRAZY AWARD FOR EPITOMIZING OUR CYBERPUNK PRESENT
To Lil Nas X, a previously unknown queer black American teenager who made a country-trap song with a beat he purchased for $30 from a Dutch producer, which sampled an obscure Nine Inch Nails deep cut, recorded it in less than an hour for $20, crafted a hundred memes to publicize it on a new Chinese-owned video-snippet social network, and then saw it go viral courtesy of a Yeehaw Challenge meme, hit first country and then crossover success, and become the longest-reigning Billboard No. 1 single of all time. Does it even get more postmodern cyberpunk than that? Lil Nas X, this is your world (well, and Billie Eilish’s) — we just live in it.
THE POWER TO DRIVE BABY BOOMERS COMPLETELY MAD AWARD FOR BEING SENSIBLY UPSET ABOUT THINGS
To Greta Thunberg, another teenager, who is an angry advocate of doing something about climate change and for some reason frequently drives a whole lot of apparently lucid people, as well as the President of the United States, completely insane, prompting them to level ludicrous and deeply attacks at a sixteen-year-old autistic girl. It is truly mystifying, and yet revelatory. Maybe they’re just upset that she’s so good at Twitter?
THE SOMEONE MUST BE TO BLAME, THIS IS SOMEONE, THEY MUST BE TO BLAME AWARD FOR LASHING OUT IN THE WRONG DIRECTIONS
To the mass media, for the techlash: the backlash against tech in which they blame the tech industry not only for its actual sins and problems, which are admittedly not hard to find, but also for essentially everything that is wrong with the world’s political and financial systems. Politics is somehow the fault of Facebook, rather than venal politicians and their ability to manipulate, er, the mass media like a Stradivarius. Inequality is somehow the fault of the tech industry, rather than City / Wall Street parasitism, regulatory capture, and, again, the politicians who actually write the laws which enact inequality. Again, the tech industry has real problems — but the fact that it has devoured the advertising and classifieds income that long propped up the media seems to have caused otherwise sober and thoughtful journalists to instinctively knee-jerk blame it for every ill, while letting their actual architects off lightly. Sadly I fear this one is going to be a perennial.
THE WHO NEEDS HUMAN FACES OR WORDS AWARD FOR SIMULATING THE DEEP INSIGHTS OF INTERNET DISCOURSE
To StyleGAN 2 and GPT-2, neural networks from Nvidia and OpenAI respectively, which generate fully convincing fake human faces, and close-enough-for-the-Internet convincing fake human comment sections, respectively. I feel certain that somewhere out there on the Internet, bots with StyleGAN avatars and GPT-2-sourced texts are already waging war against one another in befuddling comment sections: battles which have no end, no point, and no room for any actual humanity. The more things change, eh?
THE POP GOES THE IPO AWARD FOR MAKING LOCKUP PERIODS MEANINGFUL AGAIN
To Slack, Lyft, and Uber, all of whom went public this year and, despite being extremely high-profile tech companies, promptly saw their stock prices crater and stay there, while their most recent employees presumably saw their lockup period come and go while remaining resolutely underwater. All this while big, boring tech companies like Google and Microsoft saw their stock climb to new highs nearly every week. Maybe joining a rocket ship isn’t always such a great idea after all…
THE WHAT’S A FEW BILLION DOLLARS BETWEEN FRIENDS AWARD FOR JAM YESTERDAY, JAM TOMORROW, BUT NEVER JAM TODAY
To Ron Abovitz of Magic Leap, whose technology demos over the last decade have been, by all accounts, truly breathtaking and mindboggling, but whose actual shipped technology, despite ten years and nearly $3 billion in funding, has been, by all accounts, deeply disappointing. Now Magic Leap is hemmorhaging high-profile board members, signing over patents as collatoral to JP Morgan Chase while desperately trying to raise funding, and it next headset is reportedly still years away from launch. But look, those demos were amazing.
THE A SINGLE SACRIFICIAL LAMB FRANKLY ISN’T ENOUGH AWARD FOR A DEEP AND SYSTEMIC CATASTROPHE
To Boeing and its 737 MAX debacle, in which, among numerous other stunning derelictions of fundamental engineering duties, crucial safety features were sold as profitable optional extras — and yet it took not one but two crashes, killing hundreds, for them to admit any problems. Their CEO has resigned, but the company’s failures are clearly deep and systemic rather than individual; their once famously engineer-driven corporate culture is clearly no more. Their example of the decline of American capitalism in general is almost a little too on-the-nose, but then, that’s 2019 for you.
Congratulations, of a sort, to all the winners of the Jons! All recipients shall receive a bobblehead of myself made up as a Blue Man, as per the image on this post, which will doubtless become coveted and increasingly valuable collectibles. (And needless to say, sometime next year they will become redeemable for JonCoin.) And, of course, all winners shall be remembered by posterity forevermore.
1Bobbleheads shall only be distributed if and when available and convenient. The eventual existence of said bobbleheads is not guaranteed or indeed even particularly likely. Not valid on days named after Norse or Roman gods. All rights reserved, especially those rights about which we have reservations.
In 2019, nine Israeli startups became unicorns, bringing the total unicorns in the country to 20, and 16 startups completed a financing round of $100M or more (Uri Berkovitz/Globes Online)
In 2019, nine Israeli startups became unicorns, bringing the total unicorns in the country to 20, and 16 startups completed a financing round of $100M or more — Israel now has 20 unicorns, privately-held tech companies worth more than $1 billion. Only the US, China and UK have more unicorns.
Meta-analysis study indicates we only publish positive results
Enlarge (credit: Andrew Brooks | Getty Images)
While science as a whole has produced remarkably reliable answers to a lot of questions, it does so despite the fact that any individual study may not be reliable. Issues like small errors on the part of researchers, unidentified problems with materials or equipment, or the tendency to publish positive answers can alter the results of a single paper. But collectively, through multiple studies, science as a whole inches towards an understanding of the underlying reality.
A meta-analysis is a way to formalize that process. It takes the results of multiple studies and combines them, increasing the statistical power of the analysis. This may cause exciting results seen in a few small studies to vanish into statistical noise, or it can tease out a weak effect that's completely lost in more limited studies.
But a meta-analysis only works its magic if the underlying data is solid. And a new study that looks at multiple meta-analyses (a meta-meta-analysis?) suggests that one of those factors—our tendency to publish results that support hypotheses—is making the underlying data less solid than we like.
Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments
How much of a genius-level move was using binary space partitioning in Doom?
Enlarge / Cutting edge at the time, we swear.
In 1993, id Software released the first-person shooter Doom, which quickly became a phenomenon. The game is now considered one of the most influential games of all time.
A decade after Doom’s release, in 2003, journalist David Kushner published a book about id Software called Masters of Doom, which has since become the canonical account of Doom’s creation. I read Masters of Doom a few years ago and don’t remember much of it now, but there was one story in the book about lead programmer John Carmack that has stuck with me. This is a loose gloss of the story (see below for the full details), but essentially, early in the development of Doom, Carmack realized that the 3D renderer he had written for the game slowed to a crawl when trying to render certain levels. This was unacceptable, because Doom was supposed to be action-packed and frenetic. So Carmack, realizing the problem with his renderer was fundamental enough that he would need to find a better rendering algorithm, starting reading research papers. He eventually implemented a technique called “binary space partitioning,” never before used in a video game, that dramatically sped up the Doom engine.
That story about Carmack applying cutting-edge academic research to video games has always impressed me. It is my explanation for why Carmack has become such a legendary figure. He deserves to be known as the archetypal genius video game programmer for all sorts of reasons, but this episode with the academic papers and the binary space partitioning is the justification I think of first.
Read 37 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Ars Technica’s favorite cars and SUVs of 2019
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)
Well folks, we made it to the end of the decade, apparently. Since we've only been covering all things automotive since 2014, we'll save you having to read a tortured "best car of the decade," particularly since there have been some pretty huge changes during that time. Like the fact that electric vehicles are now a viable product. I'll also spare you bold proclamations like "this was the year of the EV!!", although it was good to see more variety on sale in 2019 than the year before.
Over the past 12 months we've driven a whole lot of cars and SUVs, and some of them have been really rather good. Of course, we've also driven some vehicles that failed to impress us, so Eric Bangeman and I have each put together a list of the 10 best things we drove in 2019, and the five worst. Now, enough with the preamble; on with the show!
Jonathan Gitlin, automotive editor and lover of wagons
-
Nissan built a BEV with a big battery—the Leaf Plus. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]
10. Nissan Leaf Plus
Years ago, a man had a dream about building half a million affordable electric cars a year. That man was Nissan's Carlos Ghosn, and the car was the original Nissan Leaf. Those heady sales predictions were a little ahead of the technology curve, but Nissan still sold a heck of a lot of Leafs even though everyone said the battery pack was too small. The Leaf Plus solves that problem with a 62kWh battery pack. It's a very competent battery EV, and the best car in Nissan's lineup.
Read 40 remaining paragraphs | Comments
The global soda tax experiment
Can taxes really break our collective desire for sugary, syrupy soda? (credit: flickr user: davesag)
They’re cloyingly sweet, nutritionally empty—and, increasingly, subject to taxation. More than 35 countries and seven cities in the US—starting with Berkeley, California, in 2015—now impose a tax on soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages, and several more places are considering it.
Public health researchers and organizations such as the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics see these taxes as low-hanging fruit in the battle against obesity and the health problems, such as diabetes, that often come with it. In the United States, nearly 40 percent of adults are obese, which adds $147 billion to the nation’s annual healthcare spending, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The problem is complex, but the widespread consumption of foods packed with added sugars—which add calories but no essential nutrients—plays a major role, and beverages account for nearly half the added sugar in the American diet.
“It’s really hard to shift these behaviors, and taxes are, if not the single most, one of the most impactful and important policies to move the needle on unhealthy eating habits,” says Christina Roberto, a behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Taxes have helped to reduce the public health impact of alcohol and tobacco, and many public health researchers say there’s good reason to think they can mitigate the harms of sugary beverages, too.
At the same time, there are also reasons why soda taxes might not have the impact on public health that advocates hope for. The current taxes may be too low to affect purchasing behavior. People could switch to other unhealthy foods. Or, in some cases, they could simply buy their soda in a neighboring city that doesn’t tax them.
Read 41 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Analysis: 142 startups, including 78 from the US and 22 from China, became unicorns in 2019, down from 158 in 2018; unicorns raised $85.1B vs. $139B in 2018 (Gené Teare/Crunchbase News)
Analysis: 142 startups, including 78 from the US and 22 from China, became unicorns in 2019, down from 158 in 2018; unicorns raised $85.1B vs. $139B in 2018 — In 2019, unicorns were far from mythical and Crunchbase followed them every step of the way. This year (as of Dec. 25, 2019) …
Saturday, December 28, 2019
Since GDPR became law in May 2018, the only substantial privacy-related action against a major tech company happened in the US, where Facebook was fined $5B (Nicholas Vinocur/Politico)
Since GDPR became law in May 2018, the only substantial privacy-related action against a major tech company happened in the US, where Facebook was fined $5B — The world's toughest privacy law proves toothless in the eyes of many critics. — More than 18 months after the European Union began implementing …
IoT device vendor Wyze says a server leak exposed data, including email addresses, camera user IDs, and WiFi SSIDs, of ~2.4M customers from Dec. 4 to Dec. 26 (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)
IoT device vendor Wyze says a server leak exposed data, including email addresses, camera user IDs, and WiFi SSIDs, of ~2.4M customers from Dec. 4 to Dec. 26 — Details for 2.4 million users were exposed online for 22 days. — Wyze, a company that sells smart devices like security cameras …
Vivo S1 Pro Launch Date, Oppo Reno 3, Jio 2020 Offer, More News This Week
Vivo S1 Pro launch date reveal, Oppo Reno 3 series launch, the news of Redmi Note 8 duo going on open sale in India were the biggest tech stories in a week that was pretty light on the news. https://ift.tt/2QwMRip
The Mandalorian on Disney+ Is a Most Curious Thing, Just Like Baby Yoda
It's set in the world of Star Wars and it's got the delightful Baby Yoda. So why then is The Mandalorian only available in five countries through Disney+? What decade are we living in? https://ift.tt/2t7YfJx
How to setup Parental controls in Google Play Store
Google Play Store comes with a built-in parental control option that not only filters the app and games as per the set guidelines but also requires a passcode for any purchase made on the Google Play Store. If you are looking for something like this, follow our tutorial guide. https://ift.tt/37gUm3r
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
DOJ v. Google: Microsoft invested in OpenAI over fears of falling behind Google; Kevin Scott said he was "very, very worried" in a 2019 email to Satya Nadella (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg : DOJ v. Google: Microsoft invested in OpenAI over fears of falling behind Google; Kevin Scott said he was “very, very worried”...
-
Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
-
Andrew Tarantola / Engadget : An adapted excerpt from the book “Your Computer Is on Fire”, on how voice assistants like Siri and Alexa al...
