Month: April 2019

Enlarge / Shadow Fiend, looking shadowy and fiendish. (credit: Valve)

Over the past several years, OpenAI, a startup with the mission of ensuring that "artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity," has been developing a machine-learning-driven bot to play Dota 2, the greatest game in the universe. Starting from a very cut-down version of the full game, the bot has been developed over the years through playing millions upon millions of matches against itself, learning not just how to play the five-on-five team game but how to win, consistently.

We've been able to watch the bot's development over a number of show matches, with each one using a more complete version of a game and more skilled human opponents. This culminated in what's expected to be the final show match over the weekend, when OpenAI Five was pitted in a best-of-three match against OG, the team that won the biggest competition in all of esports last year, The International.

OpenAI is subject to a few handicaps in the name of keeping things interesting. Each of its five AI players is running an identical version of the bot software, with no communication among them: they're five independent players who happen to think very alike but have no direct means of coordinating their actions. OpenAI's reaction time is artificially slowed down to ensure that the game isn't simply a showcase of superhuman reflexes. And the bot still isn't using the full version of the game: only a limited selection of heroes is available, and items that create controllable minions or illusions are banned because it's felt that the bot would be able to micromanage its minions more effectively than any human could.

Enlarge / The purported box for an "All Digital" Xbox One S. (credit: WinFuture)

Following a November report on Microsoft's plans for a disc-free Xbox One S option, new reports suggest that new hardware will arrive on May 7 and sell for €229 in Europe.

Thurrott.com's Brad Sams, who has been reliable on Microsoft-related hardware rumors in the past, this weekend pointed to reporting from German site WinFuture which "confirm everything I have reported so far." That report includes purported shots of the "All Digital Edition" of the Xbox One S and its European packaging. The hardware displayed there looks identical to the existing Xbox One S—right down to the sizing—save for the lack of a hole for the disc drive on the front panel.

The reported packaging for the 1TB system includes logos for first-party title Minecraft, Sea of Thieves, and Forza Horizon 3. It's unclear if those games will be bundled with the hardware or simply included as part of a potential Xbox Games Pass subscription.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | gustavofrazao)

Twitter and Starz have given us a new example of how copyright enforcement can easily go overboard.

At Starz's request, Twitter blocked an April 8 tweet by the news site TorrentFreak, which had posted a link to one of its news articles about piracy. News coverage about piracy is obviously not the same thing as piracy, and the article contained only still images from pirated TV shows and did not tell readers where pirated content could be downloaded. Despite that, Twitter blocked access to the tweet in response to the copyright takedown request by Starz, whose show American Gods was mentioned in the TorrentFreak article.

Here's what the tweet looked like before the takedown:

Enlarge / Elon Musk in 2015. (credit: ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Tesla is less than two years away from full self-driving, CEO Elon Musk said in an interview with MIT researcher Lex Fridman published on Friday. And he said Tesla was far ahead of other companies working on self-driving technology.

"To me right now, this seems 'game, set, and match.'" Musk said. "I could be wrong, but it appears to be the case that Tesla is vastly ahead of everyone."

Musk told Fridman that Tesla customers would need to keep their hands on the wheel "for at least six months or something like that." But he predicted that soon—"maybe even toward the end of this year, I'd be shocked if it's not next year at the latest"—Tesla's self-driving technology will become so good that "having a human intervene will decrease safety."

Enlarge (credit: Getty / Aurich Lawson)

Late on Friday, some users of Outlook.com/Hotmail/MSN Mail received an email from Microsoft stating that an unauthorized third party had gained limited access to their accounts, and was able to read, among other things, the subject lines of emails (but not their bodies or attachments, nor their account passwords), between January 1st and March 28th of this year. Microsoft confirmed this to TechCrunch on Saturday.

The hackers, however, dispute this characterization. They told Motherboard that they can indeed access email contents and have shown that publication screenshots to prove their point. They also claim that the hack lasted at least six months, doubling the period of vulnerability that Microsoft has claimed. After this pushback, Microsoft responded that around 6 percent of customers had suffered unauthorized access to their emails, and that these customers received different breach notifications to make this clear. However, the company is still sticking to its claim that the hack only lasted three months.

Not in dispute is the broad character of the attack. Both hackers and Microsoft's breach notifications say that access to customer accounts came through compromise of a support agent's credentials. With these credentials the hackers could use Microsoft's internal customer support portal, which offers support agents some level of access to Outlook.com accounts. The hackers speculated to Motherboard that the compromised account belonged to a highly privileged user, and that this may have been what granted them the ability to read mail bodies. The compromised account has subsequently been locked to prevent any further abuse.