Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: "Tens of millions" of people are using technical workarounds to secretly access WhatsApp in countries where it is banned, the messaging platform's boss has said. From a report: "You'd be surprised how many people have figured it out," Will Cathcart told BBC News. Like many Western apps, WhatsApp is banned in Iran and North Korea and, intermittently, in Syria. And last month, China joined the list of those banning users from accessing the secure platform. Other countries, including Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, restrict features such as voice calls.
But WhatsApp can see where its users truly are, thanks to their registered phone numbers. "We have a lot of anecdotal reports of people using WhatsApp and what we can do is look at some of the countries where we're seeing blocking and still see tens of millions of people connecting to WhatsApp," Mr Cathcart told BBC News. China ordered Apple to block Chinese iPhone users from downloading WhatsApp from the AppStore in April, a move Mr Cathcart calls "unfortunate" -- although the country was never a major market for the app. "That's a choice Apple has made," he said. "There aren't alternatives. I mean, that is really a situation where they've put themselves in the position to be able to truly stop something."
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the tussle-continues department: The US could lose out on valuable AI and tech talent if some of its immigration policies are not modernized, Google says in a letter sent to the Department of Labor. From a report: Google says policies like Schedule A, a list of occupations the government "pre-certified" as not having enough American workers, have to be more flexible and move faster to meet demand in technologies like AI and cybersecurity. The company says the government must update Schedule A to include AI and cybersecurity and do so more regularly.
"There's wide recognition that there is a global shortage of talent in AI, but the fact remains that the US is one of the harder places to bring talent from abroad, and we risk losing out on some of the most highly sought-after people in the world," Karan Bhatia, head of government affairs and public policy at Google, tells The Verge. He noted that the occupations in Schedule A have not been updated in 20 years.
Companies can apply for permanent residencies, colloquially known as green cards, for employees. The Department of Labor requires companies to get a permanent labor certification (PERM) proving there is a shortage of workers in that role. That process may take time, so the government "pre-certified" some jobs through Schedule A. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services lists Schedule A occupations as physical therapists, professional nurses, or "immigrants of exceptional ability in the sciences or arts." While the wait time for a green card isn't reduced, Google says Schedule A cuts down the processing time by about a year.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the real-motivation department: Microsoft's motivation for investing heavily and partnering with OpenAI came from a sense of falling badly behind Google, according to an internal email released Tuesday as part of the Justice Department's antitrust case against the search giant. Bloomberg: The Windows software maker's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, was "very, very worried" when he looked at the AI model-training capability gap between Alphabet's efforts and Microsoft's, he wrote in a 2019 message to Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and co-founder Bill Gates. The exchange shows how the company's top executives privately acknowledged they lacked the infrastructure and development speed to catch up to the likes of OpenAI and Google's DeepMind.
[...] Scott, who also serves as executive vice president of artificial intelligence at Microsoft, observed that Google's search product had improved on competitive metrics because of the Alphabet company's advancements in AI. The Microsoft executive wrote that he made a mistake by dismissing some of the earlier AI efforts of its competitors. "We are multiple years behind the competition in terms of machine learning scale," Scott said in the email. Significant portions of the message, titled 'Thoughts on OpenAI,' remain redacted. Nadella endorsed Scott's email, forwarding it to Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood and saying it explains "why I want us to do this."
Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005
Third party company Dr. Wu have updated their via their
Weibo account with images of their new DW-E35 Wingman (Micromaster Scale Cyclonus). This is a new entry in Dr Wu’s Micromaster scale line, now bringing an impressive 5 cm tall rendition of Cyclonus. we also have two variants of this new mold.
DW-E35 Wingman – G1 Cyclonus deco. It doesn’t include any weapons.
DW-E35S Wingman – IDW Cyclonus deco. It includes an IDW retooled head and a sword.
DW-E35M Wingman – Shattered Glass red redeco using the DW-E35 mold and head. See all the images attached to this news post and then join to
» Continue Reading. The post
Dr Wu DW-E35 Wingman (Micromaster Scale Cyclonus) & Variants Images appeared first on
Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.
What if a game show took one of its games and made it into a video game? Is that confusing? Well, it happened. On May 1,Dropout TV’s Sam Reich, host of the internet game show/social experiment Game Changer, announced the release of a new video game based on a specific game played on a recent episode of the show. 
Billy Dee Williams’ Lando Calrissian is one of the coolest characters in Star Wars and now, finally, this cape-wearing, smooth-talking scoundrel will soon be available in Fortnite along with a lot of other Star Wars-related content, too. 
Just in time for its second anniversary, indie RPG Citizen Sleeper is getting a tabletop RPG (TTRPG) actual play set in the game’s universe. A collaboration between developer Jump Over The Age and games journalist Quintin Smith (of People Make Games), the actual play will air on May 7. It’s an exciting celebration for… 
It’s the first day of a new month, and Sony has announced the latest set of free games you can get as a subscriber of PlayStation Plus. It’s not an amazing list, but what’s on offer is pretty solid if you’re looking for something to play as spring gets going. In particular, there’s an adorably brilliant fox adventure… 
Much like a Sonic the Hedgehog level, Sega’s platforming franchise has had its ups, downs, loop-de-loops, and bottomless chasms. With the Knuckles show out, a third live-action movie premiering in December, and Sonic X Shadow Generations coming out this year, what better time to look back at the Sonic franchise’s best… 
Good news for Starfieldplayers who have wanted a faster and better way to travel across the game’s hundreds of planets: Bethesda is planning to add a drivable dune buggy to its massive open-world sci-fi RPG. 
Diablo IV is getting a major overhaul on the heels of its one year anniversary. Blizzard recently revealed almost every major change to come in season 4 later this month, and fans are excited for the action-RPG to finally fix some of the biggest complaints players have had since launch. 
Bethesda Softworks executive producer Todd Howard has been making the rounds conducting interviews since the release of Amazon’s adaptation of Fallout, one of the series he’s helped direct in his time there. 
Starfield’s next big patch, 1.11.33, is now out for PC players on Steam via the game’s beta branch. This new update, which will go live later for everyone, adds performance options to Xbox, improved maps while walking around planets, new difficulty options, and a huge list of bug fixes. 
A new update for Fallout 4, intended to improve the game, has done quite the opposite for many players. As a result, many PC users are using Steam guides and downloading mods en masse to roll back the annoying “next-gen” update, making these Fallout 4 guides and mods extremely popular. 
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