An anonymous reader shares a report: More than 30 million people use a Roku device to navigate the constellation of streaming TV services. The company's portfolio includes the "stick" ($49.99), which resembles a USB drive; the "puck" ($79.99), a black square with smooth edges and minimal detailing; and a $400 smart TV with Roku's operating system. The more expensive options offer better image quality and such features as extra digital storage space. As the era of cable and satellite TV dims, Chief Executive Officer Anthony Wood says Roku is poised to keep capitalizing on the boom in streaming video. It's an independent player that can work well with all the entrants, he says, including new services from Disney and Apple and forthcoming ones from AT&T and Comcast. "It's satisfying to see the world be all in on streaming," says Wood. "That's nothing but excellent for Roku." Many investors on Wall Street agree: The company's stock is up more than 300% this year, and Roku is valued at over $17 billion. Having built the dominant box, Roku is under siege from companies that recognize the value of its business model. Google sells a competing smart TV operating system. Samsung sells more than a dozen smart TVs that don't use Roku's operating system. Comcast is giving its internet subscribers a free streaming box. AT&T is offering a box for its customers. Apple is investing billions in streaming shows designed in part to strengthen the appeal of its hardware. But Roku's biggest challenger is Amazon.com, which is vying for tie-in deals for its Fire TV with smart TV manufacturers and battling for supremacy in international markets. In September it announced a major expansion in Europe, where Roku is less dominant.

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In a wide-ranging interview with VentureBeat, Google AI chief Jeff Dean has discussed the company's early work on the use of ML to create semiconductors for machine learning, the impact of Google's BERT on conversational AI, and machine learning trends to watch in 2020. An excerpt from the interview where Dean talks about some of the trends one could expect to emerge, or milestones he thinks might be surpassed in 2020 in AI: I think we'll see much more multitask learning and multimodal learning, of sort of larger scales than has been previously tackled. I think that'll be pretty interesting. And I think there's going to be a continued trend to getting more interesting on-device models -- or sort of consumer devices, like phones or whatever -- to work more effectively. I think obviously AI-related principles-related work is going to be important. We're a big enough research organization that we actually have lots of different thrusts we're doing, so it's hard to call out just one. But I think in general [we'll be] progressing the state of the art, doing basic fundamental research to advance our capabilities in lots of important areas we're looking at, like NLP or language models or vision or multimodal things. But also then collaborating with our colleagues and product teams to get some of the research that is ready for product application to allow them to build interesting features and products. And [we'll be] doing kind of new things that Google doesn't currently have products in but are sort of interesting applications of ML, like the chip design work we've been doing. Further reading: AI R&D is Booming, But General Intelligence is Still Out of Reach.

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A drone with a machine gun attached can hit targets with high precision, according to its makers. Turkey is set to become the first country to have the drone, when it gets a delivery this month. From a report: The 25-kilogram drone has eight rotating blades to get it in the air. Its machine gun carries 200 rounds of ammunition and can fire single shots or 15-round bursts. Many countries and groups already use small military drones that can drop grenades or fly into a target to detonate an explosive. The new drone, called Songar and made by Ankara-based electronics firm Asisguard, is the first drone to be equipped with a firearm and be ready for service. Turkey expects the drones to be delivered before the end of the year. It is hard for a drone to shoot accurately, partly because of the difficulty of judging range and angle, and partly because the recoil from each shot significantly moves the drone, affecting the aim for the next round. Songar has two systems to overcome these challenges. One uses sensors, including cameras and a laser rangefinder, to calculate distance, angle and wind speed, and work out where to aim. The second is a set of robot arms that move the machine gun to compensate for the effects of recoil.

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As we approach the weekend -- but more importantly, the end of the year -- it's good time as any to ask about the movies, TV shows, and documentaries from this year that you enjoyed the most or found incredibly insightful. Please list them below in the comments.

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If Google were to have a mascot, it might be the Street View car, with its towering camera rig and corporate logo exterior. From a report: There's good reason for that. In the 12 years since the search giant debuted Street View, which photographs the world at street level, the cars have been the company's ambassadors around the globe, prowling urban metropolises and rural countrysides. On Friday, Google revealed how much work those cars and other devices have done to map the world: the company has captured more than 10 million miles of Street View imagery. The distance, Google said, would amount to circling the Earth more than 400 times. The company also said Google Earth, the search giant's aerial mapping service, has a total of 36 million square miles of satellite imagery for people to browse. With that collection, Google has mapped out the parts of the world where 98% of people live. The numbers mark the first time Google has released figures on how much of the world its services have charted, providing insight into the scope of Google Maps. With more than 1 billion monthly users, Maps is one of the company's most popular products. It's also a potent way for the search giant to deliver local advertising.

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Scientists have mapped out Mars's upper atmosphere wind patterns for the first time. The findings, published Thursday in Science, reinforce our understanding of the Martian climate as equal parts stable and unpredictable. From a report: The investigation uses data collected by NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, which has been orbiting Mars since 2013. MAVEN has helped teach us how Mars lost its thick atmosphere billions of years ago, but it was never designed to investigate winds. Instead, the team behind the new study had a clever idea: have MAVEN rapidly swing its normally stationary Natural Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) back and forth like a windshield wiper. This swinging effect meant that NGIMS, usually used to study atmospheric chemistry, was able to offset the orbiter's own movements and measure the winds as if it were standing still. What did they find? Overall circulation patterns in Mars's upper atmosphere proved predictably stable season-to-season. But the team also found extreme variability within local pockets of the atmosphere, and so far there's no good explanation for what's causing this.

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With 47m global users Strava has the potential to generate big data for public development [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: When the UK capital built a "cycle superhighway" in 2016, Strava indicated where people had changed their route and showed that the number of cyclists increased by 60 per cent when a bike-only lane was built along the Victoria Embankment on the Thames. Planners can observe changes, such as many cyclists avoiding a direct route, to see where roads may be dangerous. Granular data from Strava also show where cyclists have to stop and wait, information Ms Hall used to review traffic light patterns so more cyclists could get a clear run on their commute. While recognising its potential, however, researchers warned that Strava and other crowdsourced data sets should be treated with caution. Giulio Ferrini, from cycling charity Sustrans, said the average Strava user was probably "not representative" of the average cyclist. Strava says it has 5.5m users in the UK. But researchers fear they are a self-selecting group, filtered by an affinity for exercise apps that may make them more competitive than others. According to Ms Hall at TfL, they "tend to be more gung-ho." Relying on crowdsourced data, Mr Ferrini said, could lead to cities being designed for "white men in Lycra" who usually travel speedily from A to B and neglecting groups such as parents who cycle with their children to school. Tom Knights, who oversees partnerships at Strava Metro, acknowledged the tool was not "trying to do everything." But he pointed to several academic studies that found similar travel patterns on Strava data and other sources.

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There has been a massive rise in the number of bilateral agreements between central banks that allow two countries to swap currencies directly, a large number involving China. Meanwhile, a number of countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, have been repatriating their gold reserves from vaults in the US where they had long been stored. From a report: Yet by comparison, major sovereign digital currencies based on blockchain technology would be revolutionary. Blockchains are encrypted ledgers for storing information that are decentralized rather than being under any country's or company's control. When applied to international payments, this offers the prospect of much more transparent and cheaper transactions than SWIFT. It could cut the payments time lag from a couple of days to one second, and the cost from 0.01% to almost nothing. It will have the capacity to handle far higher volumes of payments, partly since they won't require bank accounts or even internet access. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and XRP have been a good experiment in using blockchains for international payments. Yet when countries issue equivalents of their own, these will have even more advantages. They will be backed by states, and completely decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will not be able to compete with this. While technological change has been incredibly fast in the information era, the system of international payments has lagged behind. But once sovereign digital currencies start taking off, this will suddenly change. Just like smartphones quickly eliminated most old cell phones, no countries will be able to reject blockchain payments for long. So while, for example, the US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin recently said that his country does not see itself launching a digital dollar in the next five years, there will be a moment when the political centre of gravity will shift and everyone will join the revolution. After the 5G network and the Internet of Things really mushroom in the next couple of years, it will be possible to replace the existing system even faster. This will be the beginning of a new international monetary era.

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We've known Windows 10 Mobile has been a dead platform for years now. Even Microsoft themselves have been telling people they need to switch to Android or iOS. But yesterday, we saw the final blow to Microsoft's mobile OS -- it officially reached its end of life and is no longer supported. From a report: There is some good news for the two of you still running Windows 10 Mobile though. The platform's office apps will receive updates and security patches until January 12, 2021. This includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. That means you still have a little more time before you absolutely need to migrate to another mobile platform if you just can')t break your Windows 10 Mobile addiction. Though we still recommend you take the leap as soon as possible.

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Mathematicians regard the Collatz conjecture as a quagmire and warn each other to stay away. But now Terence Tao has made more progress than anyone in decades. From a report: It's a siren song, they say: Fall under its trance and you may never do meaningful work again. The Collatz conjecture is quite possibly the simplest unsolved problem in mathematics -- which is exactly what makes it so treacherously alluring. "This is a really dangerous problem. People become obsessed with it and it really is impossible," said Jeffrey Lagarias, a mathematician at the University of Michigan and an expert on the Collatz conjecture. Earlier this year one of the top mathematicians in the world dared to confront the problem -- and came away with one of the most significant results on the Collatz conjecture in decades. On September 8, Terence Tao posted a proof showing that -- at the very least -- the Collatz conjecture is "almost" true for "almost" all numbers. While Tao's result is not a full proof of the conjecture, it is a major advance on a problem that doesn't give up its secrets easily. "I wasn't expecting to solve this problem completely," said Tao, a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles. "But what I did was more than I expected." Lothar Collatz likely posed the eponymous conjecture in the 1930s. The problem sounds like a party trick. Pick a number, any number. If it's odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. If it's even, divide it by 2. Now you have a new number. Apply the same rules to the new number. The conjecture is about what happens as you keep repeating the process. Intuition might suggest that the number you start with affects the number you end up with. Maybe some numbers eventually spiral all the way down to 1. Maybe others go marching off to infinity. But Collatz predicted that's not the case. He conjectured that if you start with a positive whole number and run this process long enough, all starting values will lead to 1. And once you hit 1, the rules of the Collatz conjecture confine you to a loop: 1, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, on and on forever.

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Mozilla announced this week that all developers of Firefox add-ons must enable a two-factor authentication (2FA) solution for their account. From a report: "Starting in early 2020, extension developers will be required to have 2FA enabled on AMO [the Mozilla Add-Ons portal]," said Caitlin Neiman, Add-ons Community Manager at Mozilla. "This is intended to help prevent malicious actors from taking control of legitimate add-ons and their users," Neiman added. When this happens, hackers can use the developers' compromised accounts to ship tainted add-on updates to Firefox users. Since Firefox add-ons have a pretty privileged position inside the browser, an attacker can use a compromised add-on to steal passwords, authentication/session cookies, spy on a user's browsing habits, or redirect users to phishing pages or malware download sites. These types of incidents are usually referred to as supply-chain attacks.

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Bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland have emitted a massive pulse of CO2 into the atmosphere since August that is equivalent to almost half of Australia's annual greenhouse gas emissions, Guardian Australia can reveal. From a report: Analysis by Nasa shows the NSW fires have emitted about 195m tonnes of CO2 since 1 August, with Queensland's fires adding a further 55m tonnes over the same period. In 2018, Australia's entire greenhouse gas footprint was 532m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Experts say the pulse of CO2 from this season's bushfires is significant, because even under normal conditions it could take decades for forest regrowth to reabsorb the emissions. But scientists have expressed doubt that forests already under drought stress would be able to reabsorb all the emissions back into soils and branches, and said the natural carbon "sinks" of forests could be compromised.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Cigna plans to expand a system that uses artificial intelligence to identify gaps in treatment of chronic diseases, such as patients skipping their medications, and deliver personalized recommendations for specific patients. The product, called Health Connect 360, integrates data from a combination of sources and analytical tools, some developed at Cigna and others brought in as part of its $54 billion acquisition of pharmacy-benefit manager Express Scripts Holding Co., completed late last year. Express Scripts, which began developing the service two years ago, rolled out portions of it to some customers this year. Health Connect 360 was developed for treatment of chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease, as well as for pain management. The system aggregates medical, pharmacy, lab and biometric data -- such as information from glucometers, which measure blood-sugar levels -- into a dashboard that is accessible through an online interface. The dashboard will be visible to the service's customers and to Express Scripts case managers and nurses with access rights. The system can also feed information to electronic-medical record systems for physicians. Cigna is already using AI to predict whether patients might abuse or overdose on prescription opioids. Another Cigna tool, One Guide, provides personalized help to health-insurance holders on their benefit plans, appointments and health coaching. The new Health Connect 360 system combines algorithms that analyze data such as clinical and pharmacy information with predictive models to generate recommendations and ways to best engage a patient, whether through an app or in person.

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schwit1 shares a report from People: Doctors in New Zealand are currently awaiting nearly 1,300 square feet of skin from the United States in order to treat the dozens of victims who suffered severe burns when a volcano erupted on White Island Monday afternoon. Dr. Peter Watson, chief medical officer of Counties Manukau Health, said at a press conference Wednesday that there are 29 patients being treated in intensive care and burn units at four different hospitals throughout New Zealand. Twenty-four of the burn patients remain in critical condition. "We currently have supplies but are urgently sourcing additional supplies to meet the demand for dressing and temporary skin grafts," Watson said. "We anticipate we will require an additional 1.2 million square centimeters [1,292 square feet] of skin for the ongoing needs of the patients. These supplies are coming from the United States and the order has been placed." Watson said the nature of the victims' injuries had been made "complicated" by the gases and chemicals in the eruption, thus making "more rapid" surgical treatment necessary, as opposed to if they'd suffered thermal-only burns. CNN reports that the skin grafts are coming from people who are registered to donate skin after their deaths, and typically are taken from the donors' backs or the backs of their legs. There were a total of 47 travelers on the island when the volcano erupted Monday just after 2 p.m. Six people were killed.

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In a piece for the BBC, Chris Baraniuk writes about how the intelligence of New Caledonian crows may be far more advanced than we ever thought possible. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Intelligence is rooted in the brain. Clever primates -- including humans -- have a particular structure in their brains called the neocortex. It is thought that this helps to make advanced cognition possible. Corvids, notably, do not have this structure. [New Caledonian crows belong to the corvid family of birds -- as do jackdaws, rooks, jays, magpies and ravens.] They have instead evolved densely packed clusters of neurons that afford them similar mental prowess. The specific kind of brain they have doesn't really matter -- corvids and primates share some of the same basic capabilities in terms of problem-solving and plasticity, or being able to adapt and change in the face of new information and experiences. This is an example of convergent evolution, where completely different evolutionary histories have led to the same feature or behavior. It's easy for humans to see why the things corvids can do are useful. From identifying people who have previously posed a threat to them or others in their group to using gestures for communication -- we too rely on abilities like these. [Christian Rutz at the University of St Andrews] is unequivocal. Some birds, like the New Caledonian crows he studies -- can do remarkable things. In a paper published earlier this year, he and his co-authors described how New Caledonians seek out a specific type of plant stem from which to make their hooked tools. Experiments showed that crows found the stems they desired even when they had been disguised with leaves from a different plant species. This suggested that the birds were selecting a kind of material for their tools that they knew was just right for the job. You wouldn't use a spanner to hammer in a nail, would you? Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is adapted to its niche. In the wild, New Caledonians use their tools to scoop insects out of holes, for example in tree trunks. Footage of this behavior has been caught on camera. You might think that some animals are smarter than others -- with humans at the top of the proverbial tree. Certainly, humans do rely excessively on intelligence to get by. But that doesn't mean we're the best at every mental task. Chimps, notes Dakota McCoy at Harvard University, have been shown to possess better short-term memories than humans. This might help them to memorize where food is located in the forest canopy, for example. Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is adapted to its niche. Intelligence is, first and foremost, a means towards specialization. "New Caledonian crows, like us and other clever animals, have moods and memories. Strategies and expectations. They seem remarkably able to engage with complexity," writes Baraniuk in closing. "Evolution made this possible. But cognition, like life itself, serves more than just a need. Animal intelligence allows all sorts of fascinating phenomena to arise. [...] Nature provided the notes, but animal brains make the music. The mind, as they say, is the only limit."

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At the 2019 Game Awards today, Microsoft revealed the name and console design of its next-generation gaming console: Xbox Series X. The Verge reports: The console itself looks far more like a PC than we've seen from previous Xbox consoles, and Microsoft's trailer provides a brief glimpse at the new design. The console itself is designed to be used in both vertical and horizontal orientations, and Microsoft's Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, promises that it will "deliver four times the processing power of Xbox One X in the most quiet and efficient way." The Xbox Series X will include a custom-designed CPU based on AMD's Zen 2 and Radeon RDNA architecture. Microsoft is also using an SSD on Xbox Series X, which promises to boost load times. Xbox Series X will also support 8K gaming, frame rates of up to 120 fps in games, ray tracing, and variable refresh rate support. Microsoft also revealed a new Xbox Wireless Controller today. "Its size and shape have been refined to accommodate an even wider range of people, and it also features a new Share button to make capturing screenshots and game clips simple," explains Spencer. This updated controller will work with existing Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs, and will ship with every Xbox Series X.

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CenturyLink has agreed to pay a $6.1 million penalty after Washington state regulators found that the company failed to disclose fees that raised actual prices well above the advertised rates. CenturyLink must also stop charging a so-called "Internet Cost Recovery Fee" in the state, although customers may end up paying the fee until their contracts expire unless they take action to switch plans. Ars Technica reports: "CenturyLink deceived consumers by telling them they would pay one price and then charging them more," Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in an announcement yesterday. "Companies must clearly disclose all added fees and charges to Washingtonians." Ferguson encouraged Washington residents "who believe they have received bills that include undisclosed fees to file a complaint" with the state. Ferguson's office said it began investigating CenturyLink in 2016 "after receiving complaints from consumers that their actual bills were more than the advertised price, or the price that they were promised by sales representatives." Here's what Ferguson's office found: "There were three main fees CenturyLink did not disclose: a broadcast fee of $2.49 per month, a sports fee of $2.49 per month, and CenturyLink's 'Internet Cost Recovery Fee,' ranging from $0.99 to $1.99 per month. CenturyLink charged its Internet Cost Recovery Fee to 650,000 Washingtonians. Of those, another 60,000 were also charged the broadcast and sports fees. These fees alone added up to $7 per month to a television subscriber's bill -- $84 per year. The investigation found that CenturyLink did not adequately disclose additional taxes and fees for its cable, Internet and telephone services." CenturyLink admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to a financial settlement and changes in business practices as part of a consent decree filed in King County Superior Court on Monday. The attorney general's office detailed its allegations in a lawsuit filed the same day.

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According to a new report from research firm NPD, less than 10% of Americans are actually spending $1,000 or more on a smartphone. 9to5Google reports: The report was produced by research firm NPD and shows that while the media and brand focus is on the flagships such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy S10, and iPhone 11 Pro, everyday Americans are less likely to spend their hard-earned dollars on these expensive trinkets. NPD does note in their report that this could be due to the rate of 5G adoption. Currently, 5G is in its early rollout stages in the U.S., with many regions simply not covered. 5G-enabled smartphones are thin on the ground and also come with the associated "early adopter" price-tags of well over $1000 in most cases -- although that isn't the case with products like the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren edition. Some buyers may simply be holding out until 5G becomes more affordable or viable before taking the plunge and opting for those $1000+ flagship smartphones. The report also highlights the significant difference in buying habits from region to region. NPD notes that those living in major cities such as Los Angeles and New York City are far more likely to spend over $1000 on a smartphone.

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The San Francisco workforce of Spin, the e-scooter company owned by Ford, have unionized, in a first for the industry. Mashable reports: Having voted to unionize on Dec. 5, the workers were authorized to join the Teamsters Local 665 chapter on Wednesday. As well as office-based staff, scooter rental companies largely rely on a workforce of independent contractors, i.e. gig workers, to charge, maintain, relocate, and check the 85,000 or so vehicles scattered in cities around the U.S. But Spin says its entire San Francisco workforce of 100 people is comprised of W2 employees, and this is "the model" for its 60-plus other markets. A Spin spokesperson told Mashable on Wednesday evening that the company would not be approaching the collective bargaining negotiations with an "adversarial" mindset, as it respects workers' right to unionize, and that the labor peace agreement the San Francisco office signed with the Teamsters earlier this year included a neutrality clause for that reason. "Spin has long differentiated itself with our workforce policies, choosing a W-2 model and local hiring over independent contractors and staffing agencies," the spokesperson said. "We believe investing in everyone from our headquarters to our warehouses leads to a safer, more reliable service." "We don't anticipate any changes to our work force from unionization."

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An anonymous reader writes: Cisco on Wednesday outlined new details behind its strategy to build next-generation internet technology. As a set up for what it dubs its 'Internet for the Future' strategy, the networking giant announced a multi-year plan for building and investing in 5G internet technology, including silicon, optics and software. On the silicon side, Cisco announced Silicon One, a new switching and routing applications specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for the 5G internet era. The programmable networking chip is designed to provide significant improvements to performance, bandwidth, power efficiency, scalability and flexibility, according to Cisco. Cisco said the first first generation of the chip, Q100, surpassed the 10 Tbps routing milestone for network bandwidth. In addition to the silicon, Cisco also outlined its focus on the optics space. As port rates increase from 100G to 400G, optics become a larger portion of the cost to build and operate internet infrastructure. To account for that, Cisco said its qualification program tests its optics and non-Cisco optics to comply with industry standards, and invests organically to make sure that its router and switch ports rates continue to increase. Cisco also announced plans to offer flexible consumption models for Silicon One that were first established with its optics portfolio, followed by the disaggregation of the Cisco IOS XR7 software. The Silicon One architecture will integrate into its new 8000 series carrier class routers, which is powered by Cisco's new IOS XR7 operating system. The OS will provide faster download speeds and security improvements, Cisco said. According to the report, Cisco is currently working with Comcast and NTT Communications on ongoing deployments and trials of the 8000 series.

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