Month: January 2017

(credit: Paul Miller)

President Donald Trump has been good to the American Civil Liberties—that is, his policies have. The New York-based civil rights group said it collected as much as $24 million in donations over the weekend in response to the president's executive order on immigration.

So what's a nearly century-old civil-rights law firm to do with all that cash? Well, join Y Combinator as a non-profit tech startup—of course—and receive the startup accelerator's mentorship. Y Combinator president Sam Altman announced Tuesday that the ACLU is joining the winter batch of companies, where it will receive guidance and even present to investors.

"The ACLU will have full access to the Y Combinator network and community, and they will present at Demo Day in March," he said. "We are hopeful that the YC community will join us in supporting this important work. In particular, if you're an engineer and want to spend some time helping them out, let us know. We'll keep you updated on opportunities."

Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney. (credit: Epic Games)

The rumor that Microsoft is building a version of Windows 10 that can only install apps from the Windows Store has drawn criticism before it's even official. Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney took to Twitter to attack the operating system. Although its real name is named Windows 10 Cloud, he's dubbing it "Windows 10 Crush Steam Edition."

Sweeney is convinced that Microsoft wants to exercise total control over the Windows platform and destroy Valve's Steam. Last year, Sweeney attacked the Universal Windows Platform API. He claimed (incorrectly) that third-party stores such as Steam would be unable to sell and distribute UWP games, leaving them at a disadvantage relative to Microsoft's own store. He followed this statement with the claim that Microsoft would systematically modify Windows so as to make Steam work worse and worse, such that gamers grow tired of it and switch to the Windows Store.

A version of Windows 10 that can only use software from the Windows Store, as Windows 10 Cloud is believed to be, would certainly be bad news for Steam. Steam can't be found in the Windows Store, and, due to the way it works, it's unlikely that it ever will be.

Enlarge / iPhone growth helped propel Apple to a much-improved Q1 of 2017. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple has just released its earnings report for the first quarter of fiscal 2017, which runs from the beginning of October to the end of December. Things are off to a solid start after a weak 2016—total revenue, iPhone sales, Mac sales, and services all did well, and Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed it was the Apple Watch's best quarter ever, as well. Profit, iPad sales, and sales in China were all down, but they're the only dim spots.

Apple made $17.9 billion in profit and $78.4 billion in revenue, compared to $18.4 billion in profit and $75.87 billion in revenue in Q1 of 2016. The company's gross margin was 38.5 percent. These results beat Apple's guidance for the quarter, which predicted revenue between $45.5 billion and $45.7 billion and a profit margin between 37.5 and 38 percent.

The company predicts that it will make between $51.5 and $53.5 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2017, with profit margins between 38 and 39 percent. These numbers compare favorably to the $50.6 billion the company made in Q2 of 2016, though they're still below the $58 billion that Apple made in Q2 of 2015.

Enlarge / Online poker pro Dong Kim plays poker against an AI program in 2015. He lost to an updated program in this year's rematch event. (credit: Carnegie Mellon University)

Artificial intelligence has enjoyed some remarkable online-gaming victories in recent years, though usually in slower games with clear—if incredibly multi-threaded—rule systems. On Monday, the robots pushed ahead with a slightly more remarkable online-gaming victory over their puny human masters when an AI program won big at Texas Hold 'Em poker.

A lengthy tournament of Hold 'Em—specifically, the heads-up, no-limit variety—ended with victory for Libratus, an AI program developed by a professor and PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University. Libratus emerged victorious after 120,000 combined hands of poker played against four human online-poker pros. Libratus' $1.7 million margin of victory, combined with so many hands, clears the "Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence" tournament's primary bar: victory with statistical significance.

In spite of Texas Hold 'Em's intriguing, bluff-related wrinkles, Libratus seems to have bluffers figured out. Carnegie Mellon's declared design of the AI program describes an emphasis on "algorithms [used] to analyze the rules of poker and set its own strategy"—with, you know, 15 million super-computing hours dedicated to that aim. Libratus' primary computer, named Bridges, performed additional routines both during live play and in the nighttime hours following each day of play.

Enlarge (credit: Karlyn Meyer)

It was Saturday night, and Trin Garritano was on vacation at PAX South, an annual San Antonio gathering where thousands had come together to celebrate everything associated with games and the wild and wonderful culture surrounding them.

She should have been happy and relaxed, but she wasn't. "I was just sitting in my hotel room with my friend Maya, getting angrier and angrier watching the news," she said.

The news, of course, was focused on President Trump, and especially on his recent executive order to largely bar people from seven muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Garritano, who described herself as the "businnesswoman" for the popular game Cards Against Humanity, said she was feeling isolated from her home and many of her friends and family in Chicago.

Enlarge / iOS 10.3 betas generate warning messages when you run 32-bit apps. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Beta builds of iOS 10.3, the first of which was issued last week, generate warning messages when you try to run older 32-bit apps. The message, originally discovered by PSPDFKit CEO and app developer Peter Steinberger, warns that the apps "will not work with future versions of iOS" and that the app must be updated by its developer in order to continue running. The apps still run in iOS 10.3, but it seems likely that iOS 11 will drop support for them entirely.

Though the error message doesn't explicitly mention the app's 32-bit or 64-bit support, it's definitely only older 32-bit apps that trigger the warning. Similar messages that did explicitly mention 64-bit support were present in the betas of iOS 10.0, but they were removed in the final release of the software. Apple has required 64-bit support for all new app submissions since February of 2015 and all app update submissions since June 2015, so any apps that are still throwing this error haven't been touched by their developer in at least a year and a half (developers could add 64-bit support as early as 2013, but most of them opted not to until it became a requirement).

In part because of Apple's total control of its hardware, operating system, and app distribution platform, iOS' transition from 32-bit software to 64-bit software has been uncommonly smooth and quick. The first 64-bit edition of Windows was released in 2005, and though 64-bit Windows has usually been the default since the Windows 7 era, there's still a 32-bit version of Windows 10, and it still ships on some low-end hardware. Mac OS X (now macOS) began to build 64-bit support into the OS starting in 2003, a process that wasn't completed until 2012; current versions of the OS can still run 32-bit apps that aren't otherwise incompatible. Android's 64-bit transition is complete if you have a newer phone, but some new phones still ship with 32-bit Android, and older phones (even those that actually get software updates and have 64-bit hardware support) will continue to use 32-bit Android.