If someone told you 20 years ago that in the year 2022, fortunes would be made and lost with pretend Internet money, a sentient computer would hire a real-life lawyer and video games would be on the cusp of being indistinguishable from reality, would you have believed it? It all happened this year yet somehow, we still don't have flying cars, real hoverboards or Half-Life 3?
British engineer who threw away a hard drive holding 7,500 Bitcoin has a new idea on how to recover it from a landfill
Robot dogs from Boston Dynamics, AI, and a dash of hope for getting his crazy plan approved by authorities
For years, a British computer engineer who essentially threw away the key to his cryptocurrency vault has been trying to excavate the device on which it is stored from a local landfill. This year, he came up with the boldest project yet, but the chances of it getting approved by authorities are slim to none.
Russia's rocket launcher-carrying, robot ninja dog was likely bought off Alibaba
When you buy your military hardware from Wish
Russia has unveiled a robotic dog that carries an anti-tank rocket launcher on its back. While such a creation has plenty of scary, Black Mirror-style implications, it appears to be little more than a $2,700 machine purchasable from Alibaba, carrying an RPG it might not be able to fire very well (or at all), and dressed like a dog-ninja, for some reason.
Unreal Engine 5 demo is nearly indistinguishable from reality
Unreal Engine 5 could be a game changer
In 2015, Epic founder Tim Sweeney predicted that within a decade, it would be hard to tell the difference between virtual reality and the real world. We're only a couple years away from 2025 and judging by what we're seeing from the very early days of UE5, Sweeney's prediction could very well come to fruition.
Most people think their colleagues aren't being productive while working from home
Maybe they just don't like them?
Most people might believe they are more productive working from home than when they were chained to a desk in the office, but it seems a lot of us don't hold our colleagues in equally high regard.
Developer nukes his extensively used JS libraries to protest corporate use without compensation
Thousands of applications ceased working because of the corrupted packages
Open-source software (OSS) comes in a variety of flavors. Some are massive projects developed and maintained by thousands of volunteers. Others are smaller programs that might only be supported and worked on by a single developer sharing to GitHub. Because OSS is sometimes freely used by large corporations, there is a bit of controversy over whether these companies should contribute to the community monetarily.
Google AI engineer who believes chatbot has become sentient says it's hired a lawyer
A weird situation gets weirder
Remember the story of Google engineer Blake Lemoine who was suspended from the company earlier this month after publishing transcripts of conversations between himself and Google's LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications), a chatbot development system he claims has become sentient? The case has taken an even stranger turn: Lemoine claims LaMDA has hired an attorney.
Someone Zoom bombed an Italian senate meeting and streamed Final Fantasy VII porn
That's no Chocobo!
It turns out that the Italian senate isn't a fan of hentai. At least they're not when it interrupts a virtual meeting being livestreamed through Facebook and broadcast publicly on Senato TV. That tragic and awkwardly hilarious scenario played out on Monday when an explicit CGI video of Final Fantasy VII's Tifa Lockhart became part of the proceedings.
It took 37 years to find this Easter egg in Windows 1.0
It's the only Easter egg found in the old OS
Almost four decades on, a hidden feature of Windows 1.0 has been found for the first time. It's an Easter egg saying "congrats!" that contains the names of the original Windows developers.
Woman tries to enter China with over 200 Intel CPUs hidden inside fake pregnant belly
Why bother with drugs when CPUs are so expensive?
Chinese customs have arrested a woman returning to the country with 202 Intel CPUs and nine iPhones wrapped around her torso and concealed underneath a prosthetic pregnant belly. The would-be smuggler was a young woman crossing the border between Macau, an independent territory, and Zhuhai, a city in the Guangdong Province near Hong Kong.
Console scalper says we should think about the young people making a good living from the practice
Won't somebody please think of the scalpers?
There are several reasons why people struggle to buy new consoles without paying over the odds on eBay. There's the chip shortage, of course, the continuing material/logistical issues stemming from the pandemic, and overwhelming demand. On top of all that, there are the hoards of scalpers who grab those PS5 and XBSX machines first to sell at a profit. But the person behind a scalper service has defended his actions, saying he is just helping young entrepreneurs, some of whom really need the money.