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5 ways AI can be an ally for human rights over the next decade

Dec10
by on December 10, 2018 at 10:49 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, artificial intelligence, Social Media


Today we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights by examining the positive ways artificial intelligence will affect humanity in the next decade. Also, we ate an entire cake by ourselves. There’s very little chance AI will rise up and become sentient any time soon. So there’s no real rush to convene the heads of government and hold a series of extensive arguments about AI and robot rights. But, it’s a bit strange we’re not doing exactly that with regards to AI and its effect on human rights. AI can be a powerful ally for…

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Epic is already poaching indie games from Steam

Dec10
by on December 10, 2018 at 10:35 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, gaming


Last week, Fortnite creator Epic Games announced it was creating its own store, in direct competition with Valve’s Steam store. As part of its incentive, it was using a new revenue sharing model, in which it would keep only 12 percent of revenue, as opposed to the industry standard of 30. It appears that effort is already bearing fruit, as some indie developers have either delayed or outright cancelled their Steam launches. According to a report from PC Gamer, several games have vanished from the Steam store in order to make their debut alongside Fortnite on the new storefront. Some developers are releasing…

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Australia’s horrific new encryption law likely to obliterate its tech scene

Dec10
by on December 10, 2018 at 7:19 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, world


Australia‘s government signed a bill into law last week giving law enforcement agencies the right to force technology companies to reveal users’ encrypted messages. Another way of putting it: Australia‘s tech scene will soon be located on the Wayback Machine. The law was introduced as the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018, but now it’s official. And there’s a lot to be concerned about, even if you don’t live or work in Australia. The new law gives Australian law enforcement agencies the power to issue cooperation notices to technology entities with the purpose of gaining access…

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Google+ will die 4 months sooner thanks to new bug affecting 52 million users

Dec10
by on December 10, 2018 at 6:38 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Google, Social Media


After announcing in October it would be shuttering Google+, its little-loved social media site, Google today announced that, thanks to yet another security flaw, the end would have to come much sooner than originally expected. The site will now shut down completely in April, rather than August, and access to the API network will be cut off in the next 90 days. What could have happened to make Google hit the proverbial panic button? How about a bug that affects over 50 million users? According to David Thacker, Google’s VP of product management, a November software update contained a security bug…

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University College London tells us how it developed its blockchain program

Dec10
by on December 10, 2018 at 3:42 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Events, Hard Fork, Insider


University College London has its own center dedicated to blockchain – it’s called the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies (CBT). UCL’s blockchain team will be joining us at our very own Hard Fork Decentralized this week in London. Free sign-ups for their event are now available. Before their event on December 13, where they’ll discuss decentralized finance, we wanted to learn more about what they do. We sat down and asked them a few questions about the UCL CBT: What were some of the factors that went into the decision to start the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies? The UCL…

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