This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 5) – Singularity Hub

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

DeepMind Says Its New AI Coding Engine Is as Good as an Average Human ProgrammerJames Vincent | The VergeDeepMind has created an AI system named AlphaCode that it says writes computer programs at a competitive level. The Alphabet subsidiary tested its system against coding challenges used in human competitions and found that its program achieved an estimated rank placing it within the top 54 percent of human coders.

The US Is Testing Robotic Patrol Dogs on Its BordersJames Vincent | The VergeIn a detailedblog post, the DHS outlined how its tested the robot dogs for potential work on the border. The machines have been trialed for outdoor sentry duty, autonomously patrolling pre-set GPS waypoints while carrying cameras and sensors; for inspections of train cars at railyards, walking around and under carriages; and exploring residential buildings, including a scenario that simulated being met by potentially hostile individuals.'

North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its InternetAndy Greenberg | WiredBut responsibility for North Koreas ongoing internet outages doesnt lie withUS Cyber Commandor any other state-sponsored hacking agency. In fact, it was the work of one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watchingAlienmovies and eating spicy corn snacksand periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.

NASA Details Plan to Retire ISS in 2030 and Deliberately Crash It Into the Pacific OceanGeorge Dvorsky | GizmodoThe writings been on the wall for some time now, but NASA made it official earlier this week,announcing that ISS operations will last until 2030 but no further. Upon retirement, the space station will perform a controlled re-entry and crash onto a remote part of the Pacific ocean known as Point Nemo. Its all part of NASAs plan to hand over space station responsibilities to the private sector and save a whole lotta cash in the process.

The 4-Day Workweek Is Flawed. Workers Still Want ItCaitlin Harrington | WiredFour-day workweeks are having a moment, thanks to widely publicized trials launched in several countries in the past few months, alongside companies marking the switch with splashy announcements. WIRED spoke to 15 workers at six tech companies that have adopted a shortened week. Employees generally approved; some saw it as a mixed blessing, while others considered it a godsend.'

This Company Says Its Developing a System That Can Recognize Your Face From Just Your DNATate Ryan-Mosley | MIT Technology ReviewThe science that would be needed to support such a system doesnt yet exist, however, and experts say the product would exacerbate the ethical, privacy, and bias problems facial recognition technology already causes. More worryingly, its a signal of the industrys ambitions for the future, where face detection becomes one facet of a broader effort to identify people by any available meanseven inaccurate ones.

How Facebook Is Morphing Into MetaSheera Frenkel, Mike Isaac and Ryan Mac | The New York TimesSince then, Meta has pursued a sweeping transformation, current and former employees said. It has created thousands of new jobs in the labs that make hardware and software for the metaverse. Managers have urged employees who worked on social networking products to apply for those augmented reality and virtual reality roles. The company has poached metaverse engineers from rivals includingMicrosoftandApple. And it has officially rebranded some products, like its Oculus virtual-reality headsets, with the Meta name.

Big Tech Needs to Stop Trying to Make Their Metaverse HappenGian M. Volpicelli | WiredThe open Metaverse is the Promised Land, where tech monopolies would be brought to heel, everyone would be in charge of their data and digital assets, and users would be involved in setting the course of the network as a whole. It is a tentative, hypothetical project, but one thing about it is clear: Big Tech should not be in control. A Metaverse built by them would be no Metaverse at all.

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 5) - Singularity Hub