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Every gambling machine in the UK's betting shops is being updated with software designed to detect and prevent problematic behaviour in players. From a report: The system locks gamblers out of machines for 30 seconds if erratic or excessive play is detected. While the brief lockdown is in effect, warnings about safe gambling are displayed on the machines' screens. One expert said the enforced break was "probably not long enough to have a positive effect." The artificial intelligence (AI) Anonymous Player Awareness System was launched this month by the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), an industry group representing 90% of the UK betting and gaming market. Among the behaviour patterns it tries to detect are chasing losses, spending too long on a single machine and playing a succession of games rapidly. "It was rolled out to all our machines in our 1,600 shops in early November," a spokesman for Betfred told the BBC. "These alerts are now operational on machines in all 3,200 Ladbrokes and Coral shops," a Ladbrokes Coral spokesman added.

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Ad-tech arms race continues: DNS system exploited to silently follow folks around the web

Developers working on open-source ad-blocker uBlock Origin have uncovered a mechanism for tracking web browsers around the internet that defies today's blocking techniques.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After a tease earlier this week, Valve has revealed more details and a new trailer for the first new Half-Life content in over a decade. The "full-length" Half Life: Alyx will hit Steam in March 2020, Valve says, with support for "all PC-based VR headsets." Pre-orders are already available for $59.99, though the game will be free if you own a Valve Index headset. The game, which Valve says is "set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2," has been "designed from the ground up for Virtual Reality" (i.e. you can stop hoping for a 2D monitor release). "Everyone at Valve is excited to be returning to the world of Half-Life," Valve founder Gabe Newell said in a statement. "VR has energized us." Today's video trailer shows that next year's Alyx-ization of Half-Life is equal parts abstract and concrete. The VR perspective from today's trailer doesn't include any floating body parts or feet; the only part of your virtual self you'll see, at least in today's trailer, is your hands, covered in a pair of gloves. Yet we also hear Alyx's voice, which indicates that this game's protagonist won't be nearly as silent as Freeman in his own mainline adventures. Today's announcement includes video footage that confirms a data-leak examination by Valve News Network earlier this year: a new manipulation system dubbed the Gravity Gloves. And boy do these things look cool. Need to grab or pick something up? Point at whatever that object is (whether it's close or far away) with an open hand until it glows orange, then close your hand and flick your wrist toward yourself to fling the item in your direction. At this point, you get a moment to physically "catch" the object in question. Point, clench, flick, catch. Today's trailer also confirms bits and pieces of the exciting HLA details I've previously heard about from multiple sources. For instance, the trailer includes teases of the game's approach to VR-exclusive puzzles, particularly those that require moving hands around a three-dimensional space. Some of these puzzles will require scanning and finding clues hidden inside of the virtual world's walls (and moving or knocking down anything hindering your ability to see or touch said walls). Other puzzles will require arranging what look like constellations or grids of stars around a 3D space in order to match certain patterns. And then there's the matter of familiar Half-Life creatures coming to life for the first time in over 12 years, which means they're that much more detailed and gruesome as rendered in the Source 2 engine. The Half-Life website specifies that this game can be played sitting, standing, or with "roomscale" movement. Players can use finger-tracking or trigger-based VR controllers and move around the VR environments by "teleporting" from point A to point B, "shifting" smoothly to a new position, or just walking continuously with an analog stick.

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"It's not working in its current form," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said of what was once the hallmark of Google culture. In 2020, he declared, the meetings would be limited to once a month, and they would be more constrained affairs, sticking to "product and business strategy." Don't Be Evil has changed to Don't Ask Me Anything. From a report: With that, Pichai not only ended an era at Google, he symbolically closed the shutters on a dream held widely in the tech world -- that one can scale a company to global ubiquity while maintaining the camaraderie of an idealistic clan. Pichai cited decreased attendance rates, the difficulty of running a real-time gathering across time zones, and an uptick in meetings among big product groups like Cloud or YouTube. His most resonant reason, however, was that Google employees could no longer be trusted to keep matters confidential. He cited "a coordinated effort to share our conversations outside of the company after every TGIF ... it has affected our ability to use TGIF as a forum for candid conversations on important topics." He also noted that while many want to hear about product launches and business strategies, some attend to "hear answers on other topics." It seems obvious he was referring to recent moments when aggrieved employees registered objections to Google's policies and missteps -- on developing a search engine for China, bestowing millions of dollars to executives charged with sexual misconduct, or hiring a former Homeland Security apparatchik. Pichai says Google may address such issues in specific town-hall meetings when warranted.

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Twitter said it will start letting all users hide replies to the tweets they send, an effort to improve the health of discussions and interactions on the service. From a report: The company has been testing the feature since summer in different markets, including the U.S. and Japan, but is now rolling it out globally. The tool lets users hide specific comments made on their posts, meaning those comments won't be visible to other users unless they click a button to reveal them. The change provides a degree of control that could be used to keep spammers away, or to hide hateful or inappropriate replies.

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Manufacturers can prevent the Department of Defense from repairing certain equipment, which puts members of the military at risk. Elle Ekman, a logistics officer in the United States Marine Corps, writes: In the United States, conversations about right-to-repair issues are increasing, especially at federal agencies and within certain industries. In July, the Federal Trade Commission hosted a workshop to address "the issues that arise when a manufacturer restricts or makes it impossible for a consumer or an independent repair shop to make product repairs." It has long been considered a problem with the automotive industry, electronics and farming equipment. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have even brought it up during their presidential campaigns, siding with farmers who want to repair their own equipment; while the senators are advocating national laws, at least 20 states have considered their own right-to-repair legislation this year. I first heard about the term from a fellow Marine interested in problems with monopoly power and technology. A few past experiences then snapped into focus. Besides the broken generator in South Korea, I remembered working at a maintenance unit in Okinawa, Japan, watching as engines were packed up and shipped back to contractors in the United States for repairs because "that's what the contract says." The process took months. With every engine sent back, Marines lost the opportunity to practice the skills they might need one day on the battlefield, where contractor support is inordinately expensive, unreliable or nonexistent. I also recalled how Marines have the ability to manufacture parts using water-jets, lathes and milling machines (as well as newer 3-D printers), but that these tools often sit idle in maintenance bays alongside broken-down military equipment. Although parts from the manufacturer aren't available to repair the equipment, we aren't allowed to make the parts ourselves "due to specifications."

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Around 20% of employees worldwide look for new jobs

Millennial daycare provider WeWork says it will lay off about one fifth of its workforce – 2,400 employees – as it tries to get its finances in order.…

Google announced today that it is willing to dish out bug bounty cash rewards of up to $1.5 million if security researchers find and report bugs in the Android operating system that can also compromise its new Titan M security chip. From a report: Launched last year, the Titan M chip is currently part of Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 devices. It's a separate chip that's included in both phones and is dedicated solely to processing sensitive data and processes, like Verified Boot, on-device disk encryption, lock screen protections, secure transactions, and more. Google says that if researchers manage to find "a full chain remote code execution exploit with persistence" that also compromises data protected by Titan M, they are willing to pay up to $1 million to the bug hunter who finds it. If the exploit chain works against a preview version of the Android OS, the reward can go up to $1.5 million.

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WeWork said on Thursday it is laying off around 2,400 employees globally, as the office-sharing company seeks to drastically cut costs and stabilize its business after it transformed from a Wall Street darling into a pariah in a matter of weeks. From a report: The long-anticipated layoffs are the biggest move yet by Japanese technology investment company SoftBank Group Corp, which is providing a $9.5 billion lifeline and will soon own about 80 percent of its shares, to make sure WeWork refocuses on its core business and on trying to make money. Under co-founder and ex-CEO Adam Neumann, WeWork had become bloated, was diversifying into all kinds of areas -- including setting up a school and running apartment buildings -- and was expanding at a breakneck speed without any clear route to profitability. "As part of our renewed focus on the core WeWork business, and as we have previously shared with employees, the company is making necessary layoffs to create a more efficient organization," a company spokeswoman said in a statement. Further reading: WeWork's 15,000 Employees Are in Purgatory.

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Save £££s on DevOps, containers, continuous delivery, serverless advice and info

Event The program committee for our Continuous Lifecycle London 2020 conference meets this week – which means the clock is ticking loudly on our blind-bird ticket offer.…

Apple is overhauling how it tests software after a swarm of bugs marred the latest iPhone and iPad operating systems, Bloomberg reported Thursday. From the report: Software chief Craig Federighi and lieutenants including Stacey Lysik announced the changes at a recent internal "kickoff" meeting with the company's software developers. The new approach calls for Apple's development teams to ensure that test versions, known as "daily builds," of future software updates disable unfinished or buggy features by default. Testers will then have the option to selectively enable those features, via a new internal process and settings menu dubbed Flags, allowing them to isolate the impact of each individual addition on the system. When the company's iOS 13 was released alongside the iPhone 11 in September, iPhone owners and app developers were confronted with a litany of software glitches. Apps crashed or launched slowly. Cellular signal was inconsistent. There were user interface errors in apps like Messages, system-wide search issues and problems loading emails. Some new features, such as sharing file folders over iCloud and streaming music to multiple sets of AirPods, were either delayed or are still missing. This amounted to one of the most troubled and unpolished operating system updates in Apple's history. The new development process will help early internal iOS versions to be more usable, or "livable," in Apple parlance. Prior to iOS 14's development, some teams would add features every day that weren't fully tested, while other teams would contribute changes weekly. "Daily builds were like a recipe with lots of cooks adding ingredients," a person with knowledge of the process said.

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Good news? They're not paying the ransom

A French hospital has suffered a ransomware attack that reportedly caused the lockdown of 6,000 computers.…

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates spoke out against protectionism in technological research around topics like artificial intelligence, arguing that open systems will inevitably win out over closed ones. From a report: In conversation with Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the New Economy Forum in Beijing on Thursday, Gates was skeptical about the idea that ongoing U.S.-China trade tensions could ever lead to a bifurcated system of two internets and two mutually exclusive strands of tech research and development. "It just doesn't work that way," said the software pioneer. "AI is very hard to put back in the bottle," Gates said, and "whoever has an open system will get massively ahead" by virtue of being able to integrate more insights from more sources. Citing Microsoft's AI research in Beijing, Gates pondered the rhetorical question of whether it was producing Chinese AI or American AI. In the case of Microsoft's U.K. research campus in Cambridge and the findings it produces, he said that "almost every one of those papers is going to have some Chinese names on it, some European names on it and some Americans' names on it."

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Beyond the spill chucker in G Suite docs - and Google Assistant too

Google is adding AI features to its G Suite for business, using neural network processing for grammar-checking, spelling autocorrect driven by Google Search, and spelling suggestions tailored by words used in your organisation.…

For several months, some Uber passengers in Texas have been recorded on video as they have been driven to their destinations. The video has been stored online and could have been reviewed by members of Uber's safety staff if the driver had reported a problem with the passenger. From a report: The video recordings are part of a broad initiative at the ride-hailing company to capture more objective data about what happens inside vehicles during Uber trips, where disputes between riders and drivers often play out without witnesses. Uber has experienced years of complaints about the safety of its riders and drivers, who are often left to sort out episodes without the help of the company, and it has settled lawsuits claiming that it does not do enough to protect passengers. But as Uber increases the practice of recording drivers and passengers, the company is facing new privacy pressures. "Uber already has this treasure trove of highly personal data about people," said Camille Fischer, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "When you pair surveillance during those trips, whether it's over the driver or over the passenger, you are getting a more fine-tuned snapshot of people's daily lives." Uber began the video recording program in Texas in July, and is conducting smaller tests of the program in Florida and Tennessee. In November, it announced a similar effort in Brazil and Mexico to allow riders and drivers to record audio during a trip.

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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by'

After five years at Vulture Central, mainly covering government technology and telecoms, I'm off.…

President Trump on Wednesday toured a Texas plant that makes high-end Apple computers, chatting with Apple's chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, and accepting a plate with the words "Assembled in USA." From a report: It was a pretty typical publicity event, until the end. Mr. Trump walked in front of the news cameras and took credit for the plant, suggesting it had opened that day. "For me, this is a very special day," he said. Mr. Cook stood next to him, stone-faced. The plant has been making Apple computers since 2013. Immediately after Mr. Trump's comments, Mr. Cook thanked the president and his staff. "I'm grateful for their support in pulling today off and getting us to this far. It would not be possible without them," he said. He did not correct the record. The moment was part of a bizarre afternoon in Texas, where the president played up a six-year-old factory as evidence of his three-year-old presidency's success in bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. It showed Mr. Trump's willingness to leverage his influence over American companies in his pitch to voters that he deserves another four years in the White House. And it illustrated the complicated position that Mr. Cook and other corporate executives find themselves in with this president, forced to stand silently by while he sometimes misleads about their businesses. [...] On Wednesday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cook a "very special person" because of his ability to create jobs. He turned to Mr. Cook and said, "What would you say about our economy compared to everybody else?" Mr. Cook replied, "I think we have the strongest economy in the world." "Strongest in the world," Mr. Trump said. The president then took questions on the impeachment inquiry and launched into a tirade against "the fake press." Mr. Cook stood silently nearby.

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Guilherme Rambo, one of the top Apple secret-spillers, says Apple locked him out of his developer account, preventing him from accessing critical tools needed to create and update iOS and Mac apps. From a report: In a blog post detailing his problem, Rambo revealed that Apple locked him out in August. Since then, all his attempts to resolve the issue met a dead end, he says. Rambo's post doesn't mention that he digs through Apple beta software looking for clues about unreleased Apple products -- and publishes his findings on 9to5Mac. That might be the precise reason why he's locked out. A famously secretive company, Apple historically took harsh measures against leakers and rumor mongers.

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Free software credits not for you? How about a free tier instead?

Kubecon 2019 CI/CD darling Codefresh took to the high seas of Kubecon to announce that it would be flinging $100m at the open-source ecosystem, as well as adding a free tier for its Kube-friendly pipeline tech.…

From digital strategy to data practicality with the clever folks at Qumulo

Webcast Let’s keep this simple. You’re looking to move to the cloud because you know just how powerful the model can be. You’ve seen what you can make possible, if you harness the wealth of data now available to your applications. You’re looking to deliver on your digital transformation goals, respond to new business opportunities and disrupt your entire market.…