Month: May 2017

One of F1's biggest stories in 2017 actually involves a rival open-wheel series. Two-time F1 World Driver's Champion Fernando Alonso is going to skip the Monaco Grand Prix later this month, because he'll be 4,500 miles away competing in the 101st Indianapolis 500 instead. Alonso races in F1 for the McLaren-Honda team, and for the third season running that partnership is plumbing new depths of unreliability.

Inarguably one of the very best drivers of his generation, Alonso would surely have more championships to his name but for some bad career decisions. But after 14 years in the sport he realizes the chances of beating Michael Schumacher's record seven championships is not in the cards, and so he has set his sights on a different challenge: winning the triple crown—the Monaco Grand Prix, Indianapolis 500, and 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Enlarge / Facebook Security gave details last week on how the company is fighting nation-state and other groups' efforts to use the social network to amplify false news and covert propaganda efforts. (credit: Getty Images/ NurPhoto)

Facebook Security has revealed more of how the company has begun to combat the spread of propaganda and "fake news," acknowledging for the first time that the company tracked a campaign that attempted to influence the 2016 US presidential campaign. Facebook began to fight "fake news" posts (sort of) earlier this year when the company introduced a "disputed" label that is now being added to some shared stories of questionable provenance. But the company has also launched a less-visible effort to tamp down on "false amplification" of propaganda efforts on its social media platform.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Facebook Security team members monitored a number of activities that "we assessed to fit the pattern of information operations," according to a paper published by the company last week. The paper, authored by Facebook Security's Jen Weedon, William Nuland, and Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos—entitled "Information Operations and Facebook"—acknowledges that Facebook accounts were used as part of a coordinated effort to spread misinformation and influence the shape of political conversations. Facebook did not attempt to attribute the campaign to a specific party.

While acknowledging that activity, the authors also downplayed its scope. "In short," the Facebook team wrote,"while we acknowledge the ongoing challenge of monitoring and guarding against information operations, the reach of known operations during the US election of 2016 was statistically very small compared to overall engagement on political issues." Nevertheless, Facebook reported the activity as part of a growing trend that the company now feels compelled to combat, because of its potential poisoning effect on the more organic conversations on social media.

When we talk about artificial intelligence in games, we usually picture smarter or more realistic enemies that don't come off as mindless automatons. New research, though, is showing how an AI powered by a neural network could revolutionize the way player avatars animate realistically through complicated game environments in real time.

Phase-Functioned Neural Networks for Character Control is a fundamentally new way of handling character animation that will be presented at the ACM's upcoming SIGGRAPH conference this summer. In most games, character animation is handled through "canned," pre-recorded motion capture. This means an average player will see precisely the same motion cycled repeated thousands of times in a single play-through. "Our system works completely differently," University of Edinburgh researcher Daniel Holden told Ars in a recent interview.

"We start by making a huge database of animation data," he said. "And we use machine learning to produce a system which maps directly from the user input to the animation of the character. So, instead of storing all the data and selecting which clip to play with, [we] have a system which actually generates animations on the fly, given the user input."

Enlarge / The Moon seems to be reemerging as a preferred destination for NASA's human spaceflight program. (credit: NASA)

NASA is interested in the Moon again. This week the space agency issued a new "request for information" to the aerospace industry for cargo transportation to the lunar surface. This new opportunity appears to represent NASA's increasing willingness to reconsider the Moon as a destination for human spaceflight.

Offered jointly by the agency's science, human spaceflight, and technology directorates, in its new request NASA seeks to partner with the commercial sector to deliver scientific payloads to the Moon. "NASA has identified a variety of exploration, science, and technology demonstration objectives that could be addressed by sending instruments, experiments, or other payloads to the lunar surface," the document states. "To address these objectives as cost-effectively as possible, NASA may procure payloads and related commercial payload delivery services to the Moon."

Specifically, the request seeks opportunities as early as fiscal year 2018, running through the next decade for "agreed-upon" locations on the Moon, and the provision of power, communications, and thermal control both during the flight and on the surface of the Moon. Additionally, in the request, NASA says it may also seek the return of lunar samples to Earth.

Enlarge (credit: Tim Sweeney)

Windows 10 S, Microsoft's new locked-down operating system that comes bundled with the Surface Laptop, won't allow you to change the default Web browser away from Microsoft's own Edge. Furthermore, Edge's default search provider can't be altered: Bing is all you get.

Curiously you can download other browsers from the Windows Store, such as Opera Mini, but Windows 10 S won't let you set it as the default browser: if you try to open an HTML file, or click a link in another app, it will always open in Edge, according to Microsoft's official FAQ on the topic.

The FAQ uses very direct language: "Microsoft Edge is the default web browser on Microsoft 10 S. The default search provider in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer cannot be changed." It isn't clear if OEMs will be able to override this feature of Windows 10 S.

(credit: David R. Tribble)

Paying for a ride to get around town isn't new. The first gas-powered taxicabs date to the beginning of the 20th century, and the horse-drawn "hackney coaches" of London date to the 17th century. In the vehicle-for-hire business, it's all about efficiency and execution, not "invention."

That long history notwithstanding, the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents that claim monopoly rights to, essentially, calling up a taxi—on a computer.

US Patent No. 5,973,619 is owned by Hailo Technologies LLC, a shell company formed on April 6, which sued (PDF) Uber and Lyft two weeks later.