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Facebook has told a Senate committee its focus in Australia is now on concluding deals with local news outlets and launching initiatives to support smaller, more regional publishers following the passage of the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code. "We certainly understand that it's a clear signal from the government and the Parliament that there is a strong desire for digital platforms such as ours to invest in the market," Facebook's director of policy for Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands Mia Garlick said. "We have been doing that for a number of years, and that's what we're very much focused on right now. We have two goals at present: One is to conclude deals that will allow us to bring Facebook News to Australia in the latter half of this year, and the second is to make sure that we are launching initiatives that can support smaller regional and public interest publishers." Locally, Facebook has concluded either letters of intent or … [Read more...] about Facebook denies bullying Australia as it plans to launch news service by year-end

A never-before-seen particle has revealed itself in the hot guts of two particle colliders, confirming a half-century-old theory. Scientists predicted the existence of the particle, known as the odderon, in 1973, describing it as a rare, short-lived conjointment of three smaller particles known as gluons. Since then, researchers have suspected that the odderon might appear when protons slammed together at extreme speeds, but the precise conditions that would make it spring into existence remained a mystery. Now, after comparing data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the 17-mile-long (27 kilometers) ring-shaped atom smasher near Geneva that's famous for discovering the Higgs boson, and the Tevatron, a now-defunct 3.9-mile-long (6.3 km) American collider that slammed protons and their antimatter twins (antiprotons) together in Illinois until 2011, researchers report conclusive evidence of the odderon's existence. Finding the odderon Here's how they found it: After those … [Read more...] about After 48-year search, physicists discover ultra-rare ‘triple glueball’ particle

The desktop Google Photos website seems to be getting the ability to scan for text in an image and turn it into copy-and-pasteable text, thanks to Google’s Lens technology ( via 9to5Google ). Lens has been available in many places on Android for a while, but its optical character recognition (OCR) feature coming to the desktop could make Google Photos an easy and free way to get real-life text onto your computer. According to 9to5Google , the feature seems to be rolling out widely, but a writer at XDA-Developers didn’t have it show up for them . I was able to use it, though. To use it (or to check if you have it yet), load up the Google Photos site and go to a photo where you’ve captured some text (such as a page of a book, a sign, a receipt, etc). If Google detects words, a “Copy text from image” button should pop up, and clicking that will open a pane that lets you read the text that Google found. One practical application of having Lens on desktop could be scanning … [Read more...] about Google Photos just let me copy text from a photo into my web browser

Google has worked for years to position itself as a responsible steward of AI. Its research lab hires respected academics, publishes groundbreaking papers, and steers the agenda at the field’s biggest conferences. But now its reputation has been badly, perhaps irreversibly damaged, just as the company is struggling to put a politically palatable face on its empire of data. The company’s decision to fire Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell — two of its top AI ethics researchers, who happened to be examining the downsides of technology integral to Google’s search products — has triggered waves of protest. Academics have registered their discontent in various ways. Two backed out of a Google research workshop, a third turned down a $60,000 grant from the company, and a fourth pledged not to accept its funding in the future. Two engineers quit the company in protest of Gebru’s treatment and just last week, one of Google’s top AI employees, a research manager named Samy Bengio who … [Read more...] about Google is poisoning its reputation with AI researchers

Why it matters: Many years ago, video games were considered a pastime reserved for younger people—something you "grow out of." That outdated view changed, thankfully, and today we're seeing more people over the age of 50 enjoying games than ever before. According to a new report from GWI (via Gamesindustry.biz ), the number of gamers aged between 55 – 64 (aka Baby Boomers) has grown 32% since 2018. The puzzle/platform genre is the favorite among this demographic (27%), followed by shooters (24%) then adventure/open-world (22%). Looking at a broader age range, it's revealed that 32% of Gen X and Boomers (ages 38 – 64) who use the internet play games every day; that's only 5 percent less than Gen Z and millennials (ages 16 – 37). Another stereotype that no longer rings true is that that most gamers are single males. Just 3% more male participants play games daily than females, and 33% of both sexes are married. Elsewhere, it's found that 86% of internet users … [Read more...] about More Gen Xers and Baby Boomers are playing games