Of all the many surprises that scientists, engineers, and other inventors are preparing for us, we have chosen a dozen of the brightest and the most mind-blowing. So what is going to change our lives in 2019? What to expect?...read a full article

A Rubik's cube novice interviews world record-setting speedcubers and the creator of the Rubik's cube himself to learn the limitations of the hobby.

A great example of when two-in-one is really none-in-one.

Facebook in the first quarter of 2019 disabled a staggering 2.19 billion fake accounts, up from just 1.2 billion bogus accounts in the previous quarter. The admission came on Thursday as part of Facebook's third Community Standard Enforcement Report and is the result of automated attacks from bad actors attempting to create large volumes of accounts at once.

To put the figures into perspective, Facebook as of March 31, 2019, had 2.38 billion monthly active users on its platform.

Starting today, Rime is available as a free-to-own game on the Epic Games Store until May 30, when it will be replaced with City of Brass. Also available on PS4, Xbox One and Switch, Rime follows the journey of a young boy arriving on a mysterious and gorgeous island and exploring its many secrets.

Several recent works have shown how highly realistic human head images can be obtained by training convolutional neural networks to generate them. In order to create a personalized talking head model, these works require training on a large dataset of images of a single person. However, in many practical scenarios, such personalized talking head models need to be learned from a few image views of a person, potentially even a single image. Here, we present a system with such few-shot capability. It performs lengthy meta-learning on a large dataset of videos, and after that is able to frame few- and one-shot learning of neural talking head models of previously unseen people as adversarial training problems with high capacity generators and discriminators. Crucially, the system is able to initialize the parameters of both the generator and the discriminator in a person-specific way, so that training can be based on just a few images and done quickly, despite the need to tune tens of millions of parameters. We show that such an approach is able to learn highly realistic and personalized talking head models of new people and even portrait paintings.

Thankfully nobody was killed when this suspect's RV crashed into trees and cars on this wild chase.

AMD today posted its latest version of the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition. Version 19.5.2, signifying the second release for the month of May 2019, comes with release-date optimization for "Total War : Three Kingdoms." Among the issues fixed are multi-display screen flickering problems noticed on Radeon VII, incorrect maximum temperature values reported by Radeon WattMan for certain GPUs, GPU Utilization showing up for unsupported products on Radeon Performance Metrics Overlay; and HDR video freezing or experiencing corruption on certain Ryzen APUs.

Support For

• Total War : Three Kingdoms

Fixed Issues

• AMD Radeon VII may experience screen flicker when multiple displays are connected on desktop or while applications are running.
• Radeon WattMan may list the incorrect max temperature for some graphics products.
• GPU Utilization in Radeon Performance Metrics Overlay may sometimes show on unsupported products.
• HDR Video may freeze or have corruption during playback when using Movies and TV Application with some Ryzen APUs.

Welcome to the day after Judgment Day. Producer James Cameron returns with director Tim Miller for Terminator: Dark Fate. Watch the official trailer now. In theatres 11.1.19. Linda Hamilton ('Sarah Connor') and Arnold Schwarzenegger ('T-800') return in their iconic roles in Terminator: Dark Fate, directed by Tim Miller (Deadpool) and produced by visionary filmmaker James Cameron and David Ellison. Following the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator: Dark Fate also stars Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, and Diego Boneta.

Internally, the US Justice Department's antitrust division has recommended the agency file a lawsuit to block the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, according to a Reuters reports citing two sources familiar with the matter. The final decision on whether to allow the merger now lies with political appointees at the department. That decision is expected in about a month, the two sources said. Earlier this week, two FCC commissioners announced their support for the deal, after Sprint agreed to shed its Boost prepaid brand. Both the FCC and DoJ must approve for the merger to proceed.

When visiting the Microsoft ISO Disc Image Download Page using a desktop PC, Microsoft will force you to use the Media Creation Tool to get the ISO. A direct download is not available, or you can use the Upgrade Assistant, to upgrade your current running system. This complicates things if you just want to grab the Windows 10 ISO image quickly, without jumping through Microsoft's hoops. Below we present step-by-step instructions for Firefox and Chrome, the two browsers we use ourselves:

Firefox

• Go to the Microsoft download page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
• Press Ctrl+Shift+M
• Your browser will now switch to a reduced-size mobile view of the Microsoft page
• In the top center settings list, select "iPad" from the left most drop-down
• Reload the page by clicking the reload button or by pressing F5
• You'll now see that the page contents have changed and there's a "Select edition" drop-down that lets you pick whether you want the May 2019 Update ISO or the October Update for direct download
• On the next page you can choose between all the available languages
• And finally, the last page lets you pick whether you want the 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 10 ISO
• Upon clicking "Confirm," your download of the ISO file should begin.

Chrome

• Go to the Microsoft download page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
• Press F12 (a developer window will show up)
• Press Ctrl+Shift+M
• Your browser will now switch to a reduced-size mobile view of the Microsoft page
• In the top center settings list, select "iPad" from the left most drop-down
• Reload the page by clicking the reload icon or by pressing F5
• You'll now see that the page contents have changed and there's a "Select edition" drop-down that lets you pick whether you want the May 2019 Update ISO or the October Update for direct download
• On the next page you can choose between all the available languages
• And finally, the last page lets you pick whether you want the 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 10 ISO
• Upon clicking "Confirm," your download of the ISO file should begin.

Now, after nearly a month and a half, Windows 10 version 1903 is available for all non-Insiders. You'll need to be a "seeker", something that means something different than it did previously. For the last couple of Windows feature updates, Microsoft has just given it to anyone who hits the 'Check for updates' button in Windows Update. Now, your PC will tell you there's a feature update is available, and you'll be explicitly asked if you want to install it. That way, if you want to check for cumulative updates, you can get them without worrying about getting a feature update that might cause issues. There are quite a few things that are new in the update. One of the most notable front-facing features is a redesigned light theme. You can now have a light taskbar, as well as make other elements light, and you can split the settings for the system and the settings for apps. Another interesting feature is Windows Sandbox, which is limited to non-Home SKUs of Windows 10 version 1903. This creates a virtualized Windows 10 environment; it's pretty much a VM without having to take the time to create a VM.

You'll also find that you can uninstall a lot more of the system apps, including 3D Viewer, Calculator, Groove Music, Mail and Calendar, Movies & TV, Paint 3D, Snip & Sketch, Sticky Notes, and Voice Recorder. This is great news for anyone who doesn't want those things. Windows 10 version 1903 is available to download now through Windows Update or with the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool.

Is there anything that can stop a tungsten-core 20mm round?

Three-time Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda has died aged 70. The Austrian had been battling health issues since mid-last year, including a lung transplant in August that required a two-month stay in hospital. He was then hospitalised again for a short period at the beginning of 2019 after contracting a flu infection. There have been reports from Austrian press in the recent days that he had been receiving kidney dialysis in Switzerland. It has now been confirmed that he has succumbed to his ill health, passing away on Monday surrounded by family.

As announced today, a film based on Just Cause is now officially in the works and it has a rather reputable name attached to the project. Derek Kolstad, who is the writer and creator of the John Wick films, the third installment of which just recently released, has been chosen to adapt the wild world of Just Cause into a feature-length film. Constantin Film will be working on the project alongside Adrian Askarieh of Prime Universe Films who will serve as a producer. Askarieh is said to have been trying to kickstart a film based on the Just Cause series for almost a decade at this point.

On paper, this marriage between Just Cause and Kolstad seems like one that could work. The John Wick films have been acclaimed as some of the best action flicks of the past decade. At the same time, Just Cause has always been synonymous for its emphasis on explosions and action rather than plot and world building. Even though the track record for video game films is less than stellar, perhaps this collaboration could prove to be beneficial and help break the stigmas surrounding game-to-film adaptations.

Considering the project is just getting off of the ground, we likely won't hear much more about the Just Cause movie for a long while but if you've been holding out hope to see Rico Rodriguez one day realized in a movie, your wish has now come true.

French phone maker Wiko today made its US debut with launch of the Ride, an $80 Android phone available now from Boost. The Ride is an entry-level phone with a 5.45-inch display, 5 megapixel main camera, 2 megapixel selfie camera, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, and a 2,500 mAh removable battery. It has a memory card slot, 3.5mm audio jack, and runs Android version 9 (Pie). Wiko is a 5,000-person company that makes phones with a focus on design that are popular in Western Europe. To support its US operations, the company is opening offices in Plano, TX and Atlanta, GA.

The trade ban imposed on Chinese tech giant Huawei by the U.S. Department of Commerce, and ratified through an Executive Order by President Donald Trump, is cutting both ways. Not only are U.S. entities banned from importing products and services from Huawei, but also engaging in trade with them (i.e. selling to them). U.S. tech firms stare at a $11 billion revenue loss by early estimates. Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs compiled a list of companies impacted by the ban, and the extent of their revenue loss. It turns out that AMD isn't a small player, and in fact, stands to lose more revenue in absolute terms than even Microsoft. It earns RMB 268 million (USD $38.79 million) from Huawei, compared to Microsoft's RMB 198 million ($28.66 million). Intel's revenue loss is a little over double that of AMD at RMB 589 million ($84 million), despite its market-share dominance.

That's not all, AMD's exposure is higher than that of Intel, since sales to Huawei make up a greater percentage of AMD's revenues than it does Intel's. AMD exports not just client-segment products such as Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics, but possibly also EPYC enterprise processors for Huawei's server and SMB product businesses. NVIDIA is affected to a far lesser extent than Intel, AMD, and Microsoft. Qualcomm-Broadcom take the biggest hit in absolute revenue terms at RMB 3.5 billion ($508 million), even if their exposure isn't the highest. The duo export SoCs and cellular modems to Huawei, both as bare-metal and licenses. Storage hardware makers aren't far behind, with the likes of Micron, Seagate, and Western Digital taking big hits. Micron exports DRAM and SSDs, while Seagate and WDC export hard drives.

Microsoft's OneNote app on iOS is getting an update, which allows you to set images as the background in your notes. All you have to do is press and hold on the image for the popup menu to appear, and tap "Set Picture to Background". Once this is done, the image is part of the background of your note. You can type over it, write on it with inking, and even place another image on top of it. It no longer functions like a regular image in OneNote.

NEW! You can now "Set Picture to Background" for #OneNote on iPad and iPhone 🖼 Make it easy to ink or Draw on Pictures ✏ #edtech #edtchat #MIEExpert

Just push and hold to pop the context menu pic.twitter.com/4d18EccUJf

— Mike Tholfsen (@mtholfsen) May 19, 2019

It seems that after setting an image as the background, there's also no way to get the context menu to appear again, so once it's the background, you can't easily go back.

If you want to check out OneNote on the App Store, or update your app, you can find it here.