Lifeboat Foundation

French video game company Ubisoft on Friday confirmed it was a victim of a “cyber security incident,” causing temporary disruptions to its games, systems, and services.

The Montreuil-headquartered firm said that an investigation into the breach was underway and that it has initiated a company-wide password reset as a precautionary measure.

“Also, we can confirm that all our games and services are functioning normally and that at this time there is no evidence any player personal information was accessed or exposed as a by-product of this incident,” the company said in a statement.

Videos from the world’s largest robot trade show in Tokyo last week show Kawasaki’s four-legged robot, Bex, in action.

In today’s world, autonomous machines play a major role in our lives, yet it is still difficult to establish trust between humans and machines. Aside from concerns about unexpected disruptions, robots do not yet communicate exactly the way humans do. Researchers have revealed that independent computer systems are able to increase trust in robots, increase collaboration, and streamline task execution.

Humans tend to rely more on robots that provide self-assessment while performing their tasks, according to the study. Communication is essential for establishing trust in a human working environment. Humans and autonomous machines may have a gap of understanding, which can result in a robot performing an action incorrectly, and even misuse or exploitation of the robot’s capabilities.

In a study conducted by researchers from Draper and the University of Colorado Boulder in the USA, researchers examined how autonomous robots using probability models are capable of calculating and expressing self-assessment skills, forming a kind of machine-self-confidence. The models were developed to predict their behavior and provide a perspective on their mission before the event occurs.

Bilal Haider is studying how multiple areas of the brain work together for visual perception. This could help researchers understand if neural activity “traffic jams” underlie all kinds of visual impairments: from running a red light when visual attention is elsewhere, to shedding light on the autism-affected brain.

To do this kind of work, researchers need a reliable “map” of all the visual brain areas with specific coordinates for each unique brain. Drawing the map requires monitoring and recording data from an active, working brain, which usually means creating a window in the skull to watch blood flow activity.

Haider’s team has developed a better approach—a new kind of window that’s more stable and allows for longer-term studies. The assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University explains how in a paper published in February in Scientific Reports.

SXSW has been a part of my life for decades. If you live around Texas, check it out. It has transformed from a simple music fest, to simply awesome.

South by Southwest® (SXSW®) celebrates the convergence of tech, film, and music industries. Join us for SXSW 2022 from March 11–20 in Austin, Texas.

The Sun is continuing its rowdy behavior, with flares and coronal mass ejections almost every day since mid-January. That means the inevitable has happened: some of those eruptions have blasted in the general direction of Earth, which means we’re in for some solar storms.

The Space Weather Prediction Center of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Met Office have both issued advisories for mild and moderate geomagnetic storms over the next couple of days.

That doesn’t mean we have anything to worry about; in fact, we’ve already been hit by mild and moderate geomagnetic storms over the last couple of days, clocking in at G1 and G2 on the five-level solar storm scale.

The SLS rocket is set to launch this summer.

NASA will roll out its SLS rocket to prepare for a wet dress rehearsal ahead of the Artemis mission.

SpaceX drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) has departed Port Canaveral in anticipation of the company’s sixth consecutive Starlink launch.

Known as Starlink 4–12, the mission will be SpaceX’s sixth uninterrupted Starlink launch – just shy of the company’s record of seven Starlink launches between commercial payloads. Though SpaceX would probably prefer to avoid month-long streaks without commercial launches, the company’s ability to use its own launch capabilities to deploy its Starlink constellation means that it can maintain valuable economies of scale while simultaneously launching satellites that generate some revenue.

With approximately 200,000 active subscribers, Starlink should already be generating around ~$250 million in annual revenue – perhaps enough to pay for anywhere from five to ten Starlink launches. Viewed another way, $250M would also pay the average annual salaries of more than 2,300 employees. Even if it doesn’t come close to the $1–2 billion SpaceX is likely spending annually on Starlink development, deployment, and operations, it’s still better than the alternative that all other launch providers are left with: nothing.

New approach lays groundwork for compact 3D displays that create more realistic virtual scenes.

Researchers have demonstrated a prototype glasses-free 3D light field display system with a significantly extended viewing distance thanks to a newly developed flat lens. The system is an important step toward compact, realistic-looking 3D displays that could be used for televisions, portable electronics, and table-top devices.

Light field displays use a dense field of light rays to produce full-color real-time 3D videos that can be viewed without glasses. This approach to creating a 3D display allows several people to view the virtual scene at once, much like a real 3D object.