Los timos tipo ‘pump and dump’ son cada vez más comunes en el universo de las monedas criptográficas. Para luchar contra ellos, una investigación ha analizado su funcionamiento y ha creado un algoritmo capaz de predecir cuando hay uno a punto de suceder
Source: MIT
Hasta hace poco se creía imposible que algún material fuera capaz de convertirse en superconductor a temperaturas habituales en la Tierra, pero parece que el hidruro de lantano lo ha conseguido, aunque para ello requiere estar sometido a una presión elevadísima
Source: MIT
Twitter was down 11 percent today after a Citron Research report called the platform, the “Harvey Weinstein of social media” and set a low target price of $20. As of publishing today, the stock was down more than 11 percent at $29.29 a share.
In their report Citron did not mince words, basing their conclusions on an Amnesty International Report claiming widespread abuse on the Twitter platform. “Citron has been following Twitter for years and when we read the just published piece from Amnesty International, we immediately knew the stock had become uninvestable and advertisers will soon be forced to take a hard look at all sponsorships with Twitter,” Citron wrote.
Citron was reacting to an Amnesty International report that took Twitter to task for not doing more to curb abusive behavior. “We have built the world’s largest crowdsourced data set about online abuse against women… Twitter is a place where racism, misogyny and homophobia are allowed to flourish basically unchecked,” the report stated.
The report went on to call out Twitter for not doing more. “To be clear: it is NOT our job as a human rights organization to be analyzing abusive tweets on this platform – it’s Twitter’s. “But [the company’s] refusal to make public this information, while allowing abuse to flourish basically unchecked, meant we had to do this study for them,” the report said.
For its part, Twitter says it’s been working to reign in the kind of abuses that the Amnesty report criticized them for. “Our abusive behavior policy strictly prohibits behavior that harasses, intimidates or silences another user’s voice. We are also investing in better technology and tools to enable us to more proactively identify abusive, violative material, to limit its spread and reach on the platform and to encourage healthier conversations,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Global Lead at Twitter, defended his company, claiming that it wasn’t clear how Amnesty defined abusive language in the report. “With regard to [the] forthcoming [Amnesty International] report, I would note that the concept of ‘problematic’ content for the purposes of classifying content is one that warrants further discussion. It is unclear how [Amnesty has] defined or categorized such content, or if [they] are suggesting it should be removed from Twitter. We work hard to build globally enforceable rules and have begun consulting the public as part of the process — a new approach within the industry,” she said in a statement.
Source: TechCrunch
Obama-era regulation was supposed to curtail livestock antibiotics. But consumers are pushing Perdue, McDonalds, Tyson, Walmart, and more to change.
Source: Wired
Social game developer Zynga has entered into an agreement to acquire Small Giant Games, the startup behind the popular mobile game Empires & Puzzles, in a deal expected to total $700 million.
Zynga, which has tumbled since its 2011 Nasdaq initial public offering, will initially acquire 80 percent of Small Giant Games for $560 million, composed of $330 million in cash and $230 million of unregistered Zynga common stock. Zynga will fund part of the transaction with a $200 million credit facility.
“We’ve been impressed by the quality and momentum of Empires & Puzzles as we add another Forever Franchise into Zynga’s portfolio,” Zynga chief executive officer Frank Gibeau said in a statement. “Small Giant has created an innovative game that delivers a unique player experience that engages over the long term.”
The deal is expected to close on January 1. Zynga will purchase the remaining 20 percent of Small Giant over the next three years “at valuations based on specified profitability goals.”
Helsinki-based Small Giant Games had raised $52 million in equity funding from EQT Ventures, Creandum, Spintop Ventures, Profounders and others since it was founded in 2013. The company reported $33 million of revenue for Empires & Puzzles, its most popular game, 10 months after its launch in 2017. Small Giant, which is also behind Alliance Wars and Season 2: Atlantis, says they exceeded 2017’s revenue just four months into 2018.
“Our studio was founded on the idea that small, skillful teams can accomplish giant things, and I am confident that partnering with Zynga is the right next step in our evolution,” Small Giant CEO Timo Soininen said in a statement. “We will now operate as a separate studio within Zynga, maintaining our identity, culture and creative independence. By leveraging the expertise and support from the wider Zynga team, we will amplify the reach of Empires & Puzzles and the new games in our development pipeline.”
Zynga, founded in 2007, is the developer of FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Words with Friends and several other mobile games. The company reported revenues of $248.88 million for the quarter ended September 2018, failing to meet analyst estimates.
Zynga expects to bring in $243 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Source: TechCrunch
Apple’s transparency report just got a lot more — well, transparent.
For years, the technology giant released a twice-a-year report on the number of government demands it received. It wasn’t much to look at in the beginning; a seven-page document with only two tables of data. Once in a while, Apple would tack on a new table of data as the government would ask for new kinds of customer data.
But that wasn’t sustainable, nor was it particularly easy to read — especially for the hawkish handful who would obsessively read and digest each report.
As other companies, like Microsoft and Google, received more demands over the years, they began to expand their own reports to help users to better understand who wanted their data, why and how often. Apple knew its document-only reports didn’t cut it, and took a leaf from its Silicon Valley neighbors and pushed ahead with its own plan to publish its biannual numbers in a way that ordinary people — like its customers — can read and understand.
The company’s latest transparency report, out Thursday, still comes in its traditional PDF format for those who don’t like change, but now also has its own dedicated, browsable and interactive corner of Apple’s website. The new site breaks down the figures by country — but also historically to provide trends, patterns and context over years’ worth of reporting cycles, in a way that’s more in line with how other tech giants report their government data demands.
And, the company has CSV files for download, containing raw data for academics to drill deeper down into the numbers.
Apple has also reworked how it discloses national security requests, such as FBI-issued subpoenas like national security letters (NSLs) and orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). Since the introduction of the Freedom Act in 2015, passed in response to the NSA surveillance scandal in 2013, companies were given three options of reporting their secret orders — including the numerical bands it can release under what time period. Most companies disclosed the secret requests in bands of 500 with a six-month reporting delay to avoid any inadvertent interference with active investigations. Apple originally released its figures in bands of 250 requests, but is now expanding that to bands of 500 requests to standardize its reporting with other tech companies. It’s also breaking out its FISA content (such as photos, email, contacts and device backups) and non-content requests (like subscriber records and transactional logs).
As for the figures, the transparency report reveals a rise in worldwide demands for data.
According to the report, Apple received 32,342 demands — up 9 percent on the last reporting period — to access 163,823 devices in the second half of the year.
The report found Germany as the top requester, issuing 13,704 requests for data on 26,160 devices. Apple said that the figures were due to the high volume of device requests due to stolen devices. The U.S. was in second place with 4,570 requests for 14,911 devices.
Apple also received 4,177 requests for account data, such as information stored in iCloud — up by almost 25 percent on the previous reporting period — affecting some 40,641 accounts, a four-fold increase. The company said the spike was attributable to China, which asked for thousands of devices’ worth of data under a single fraud investigation.
And, the company saw a 30 percent increase in requests to preserve data for up to three months to 1,579 cases, affecting 4,033 accounts, while law enforcement obtained the right legal process to access the data.
The company also said it received between 0 and 499 national security orders, including secret rulings from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, affecting 1,000 and 1,499 accounts. As the company is subject to a six-month reporting delay, the updated figures are expected out in the new year.
Apple did not reveal in this latest report any national security letters where the gag orders were lifted.
Source: TechCrunch
Back in March came the surprising news that a satellite communications company still more or less in stealth mode had launched several tiny craft into orbit — against the explicit instructions of the FCC. The company, Swarm Technologies, now faces a $900,000 penalty from the agency, as well as extra oversight of its continuing operations.
Swarm’s SpaceBEEs are the beginning of a planned constellation of small satellites with which the company intends to provide low-cost global connectivity.
Unfortunately, the units are so small — about a quarter the size of a standard cubesat, which is already quite tiny — that the FCC felt they would be too difficult to track, and did not approve the launch.
SpaceBEEs are small, as you can see. Credit: Swarm Technologies
Swarm, perhaps thinking it better to ask forgiveness than file the paperwork for permission, launched anyway in January aboard India’s PSLV-C40, which carried more than a dozen other passengers to space as well. (I asked Swarm and the launch provider, Spaceflight, at the time for comment but never heard back.)
The FCC obviously didn’t like this, and began an investigation shortly afterwards. According to an FCC press release:
The investigation found that Swarm had launched the four BEEs using an unaffiliated launch company in India and had unlawfully transmitted signals between earth stations in Georgia and the satellites for over a week. In addition, during the course of its investigation, the FCC discovered that Swarm had also performed unauthorized weather balloon-to-ground station tests and other unauthorized equipment tests prior to the small satellites launch. All these activities require FCC authorization and the company had not received such authorization before the activities occurred.
Not good! As penance, Swarm Technologies will have to pay the aforementioned $900,000, and now has to submit pre-launch reports to the FCC within five days of signing an agreement to launch, and at least 45 days before takeoff.
The company hasn’t been sitting on its hands this whole time. The unauthorized launch was a mistake to be sure, but it has continued its pursuit of a global constellation and launched three more SpaceBEEs into orbit just a few weeks ago aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9.
Swarm has worked to put the concerns about tracking to bed; in fact, the company claims its devices are more trackable than ordinary cubesats, with a larger radar cross section and extra reflectivity thanks to a Van Atta array (ask them). SpaceBEE-1 is about to pass over Italy as I write this — you can check its location live here.
Source: TechCrunch
A new DOJ indictment outlines how Chinese hackers allegedly compromised data from companies in a dozen countries in a single intrusion.
Source: Wired
Plus: ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’ gets a Netflix sequel and ‘Aquaman’ rules the box office.
Source: Wired
Look, I get it. Even when executed well, superhero origin stories on the big screen have become depressingly formulaic — and with the exception of “Wonder Woman,” the ones in the DC Extended Universe haven’t been executed well.
And although I was one of the few moviegoers who actually enjoyed last year’s “Justice League,” I’ll admit the Aquaman material didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the character’s solo film. Jason Momoa’s charm couldn’t obscure the fact that he was largely reduced to grunting catchphrases like “My man!”, or that the one or two scenes delving into his backstory were easily the least comprehensible parts of an often incomprehensible film.
But now that “Aquaman” is about to open domestically (a couple weeks after kicking off a hugely successful run in China), I have to tell you: I loved it.
It certainly has its own flaws, like a script full of clunky exposition, stretched out by fetch quests that were transparently designed to keep our heroes occupied until the grand finale. It’s also insanely overstuffed, trying to make room for a star-crossed romance, an Indiana Jones-style archeological adventure, a fantasy epic with giant sea monsters and the standard superhero beats, all in a runtime that’s a hair under two-and-a-half hours.
But that four-films-for-the-price-of-one quality is exactly why I liked it so much. “Aquaman” is a big, crazy movie, full of big, crazy moments. And while some of those moments are pretty dumb (this movie is absolutely unafraid of looking dumb), very little of it is boring.
Take the opening, which doesn’t actually start with Aquaman. Instead, we see a lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison) stumbling across a mysterious, wounded woman from the sea (Nicole Kidman). The romance that ensues may be pretty standard fare, but Morrison and Kidman are talented enough to make it funny and — when circumstances inevitably pull them apart — a little sad.
Of course, the couple has a son, and that son grows up to be played by the hulking Momoa. The adult Arthur Curry can talk with fish and other sea animals, and he’s also got superhuman strength and toughness. Plus, he’s the firstborn heir to the throne of Atlantis — a fact that becomes more pressing with the arrival of Mera (Amber Heard), who’s hoping to enlist him in her plans to stop his brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) from declaring war on the surface world. Soon enough, Arthur and Mera are searching for a mythical trident while being hunted by Orm and and the vengeful pirate Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).
Like I said, that search involves several more steps than necessary, but I really didn’t mind. Although Momoa’s version of Aquaman as a gruff, hard-drinking superhero bro can be grating (particularly in this film, where he doesn’t have the counterbalance of a Wonder Woman or a Flash), I found myself warming to him as the story went on. And most of the action scenes are impressively staged, particularly a long, brutal fight between Aquaman, Mera and Black Manta in Sicily.
That fight aside, the movie is at its best when it stays underwater, where director James Wan and his design team have created a vivid fantasy world. It can take a few minutes to get used to the wavy hair and distorted speech, but once you do, you’ll enjoy the sight of royalty riding sharks and manta rays to get around, and you’ll get to visit kingdoms where fish people and crab people rule. (My zoological knowledge may be failing me here, but I think the movie actually has two different kinds of crab people.)
Is it silly? Of course. But the instant I saw a manta ray shooting laser beams, I was on-board. And when Aquaman and Mera entered the sprawling, psychedelically-colored city of Atlantis, my inner 13-year-old had nearly fainted from excitement.
And that was all before before the final battle, which saw vast armies of underwater creatures charge at each other while colossal sea beasts erupted from the ground beneath their feet. It’s like a deranged cross between “Lord of the Rings” and “Pacific Rim,” and it is glorious.
This movie isn’t for everyone, but I think I’ve figured out a simple litmus test to determine whether you’re in the target audience: Do you want to see Jason Momoa face off against a multi-tentacled monster? And what if that multi-tentacled monster was voiced by Julie Andrews?
If that’s what you’re looking for, “Aquaman” will not disappoint.
Source: TechCrunch