The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday to Louise Gluck, one of America's most celebrated poets, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." The award was announced at a news conference in Stockholm. From a report: Gluck, who was born in New York in 1943, has written numerous poetry collections, many of which deal with the challenges of family life and growing older. They include "The Wild Iris," for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993, and "Faithful and Virtuous Night," about mortality and grief, from 2014. She was named the United States' poet laureate in 2003. At the Nobel announcement, Anders Olsson, the chair of the prize-giving committee, praised her minimalist voice and especially poems that get to the heart of family life. "Louise Gluck's voice is unmistakable," he said. "It is candid and uncompromising, and it signals this poet wants to be understood." But he also said her voice was also "full of humor and biting wit."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: France has introduced a new law to protect young social media stars. The legislation aims to regulate the hours under-16s can work online and what happens to their earnings. It also enshrines the right to be forgotten, meaning that platforms will be obliged to take down content on the child's request. The popularity of child influencers has grown rapidly in recent years, with a number of young names appearing on the list of YouTube's top earners. The change will make France a pioneer in the rights of child social media stars, the MP behind the bill, Bruno Studer, was quoted as saying by Le Monde newspaper. The new law, which was passed unanimously on Tuesday, does not affect all children who appear on social media, but instead targets those who spend significant amounts of time working online and whose work generates an income. The change offers them the same protections as those given to child models and actors in France, with their earnings placed in a bank account until they turn 16. Companies wishing to employ child influencers must also receive permission from local authorities.

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A Texas grand jury indicted Netflix for the "lewd" representation of children in the controversial French film "Cuties." The Hill reports: The Sept. 23 indictment shows the Tyler County Grand Jury charged the popular streaming site for "promotion of lewd visual material depicting child" for its drama about a young girl who is torn between her conservative Muslim family's values and her desire to join a dance troupe. Among the charges in question is Netflix's alleged promotion of material that portrays the "exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child, which appeals to the prurient interest in sex and has no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" -- a violation of the Texas penal code, according to the press release from Tyler County District Attorney Lucas Babin. Netflix denied any wrongdoing after a summons was served on Oct. 1 by the Texas State Rangers. "'Cuties' is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film," the company said in a statement to The Hill. After its Sept. 9 release, various GOP lawmakers including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) condemned "Cuties" for its alleged sexualization of minors. In a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr dated Sept. 11, Cruz called on the Department of Justice to investigate possible child abuse in relation to "Cuties."

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shirappu writes: AI technology is getting better and better at improving old video footage by adding new frames to improve smoothness and adding color to black and white footage (a great explainer for the techniques can be found here). Now, YouTube channel DutchSteamMachine is applying the same techniques to the moon landing in 1969. The AI-restored footage stabilizes the shaky old footage, adds frames, and motion smooths the whole thing to essentially bring the footage into the present. Though it can be difficult to improve these videos because high-quality source footage is a necessity, it's still a good example of how improved these technologies are becoming with the development of AI support. The actual improved video of the moon landing can be found here.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T is reportedly moving ahead with its plan to sell DirecTV despite receiving bids that value the satellite division at less than one-third of the price AT&T paid for it. AT&T bought DirecTV for $49 billion in 2015 and has lost seven million TV subscribers in the last two years. In late August, news broke that AT&T is trying to sell DirecTV to private-equity investors and that a deal could come in at less than $20 billion. The New York Post yesterday provided an update on the sale process, writing that AT&T is pressing ahead with an auction even though it is "shaping up to be a fire sale." The sale process is being handled for AT&T by Goldman Sachs. "Opening bids from a coterie of buyout firms came in at around 3.5 times DirecTV's roughly $4.5 billion of EBITDA, implying a valuation at around $15.75 billion, according to a source close to the process," the Post article said. Despite the low first-round bids, AT&T "last week invited a handful of suitors into the second round of an auction of the struggling satellite-TV broadcaster," the Post wrote. Private-equity firms "are looking to milk the shrinking company for cash as DirecTV's subscribers steadily flee to lower-priced streaming-video services like Netflix," the Post wrote. AT&T could retain a minority stake in DirecTV after a sale.

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French company Nawa technologies says it's already in production on a new electrode design that can radically boost the performance of existing and future battery chemistries, delivering up to 3x the energy density, 10x the power, vastly faster charging and battery lifespans up to five times as long. NewAtlas reports: Nawa is already known for its work in the ultracapacitor market, and the company has announced that the same high-tech electrodes it uses on those ultracapacitors can be adapted for current-gen lithium-ion batteries, among others, to realize some tremendous, game-changing benefits. It all comes down to how the active material is held in the electrode, and the route the ions in that material have to take to deliver their charge. Today's typical activated carbon electrode is made with a mix of powders, additives and binders. Where carbon nanotubes are used, they're typically stuck on in a jumbled, "tangled spaghetti" fashion. This gives the charge-carrying ions a random, chaotic and frequently blocked path to traverse on their way to the current collector under load. Nawa's vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, create an anode or cathode structure more like a hairbrush, with a hundred billion straight, highly conductive nanotubes poking up out of every square centimeter. Each of these tiny, securely rooted poles is then coated with active material, be it lithium-ion or something else. The result is a drastic reduction in the mean free path of the ions -- the distance the charge needs to travel to get in or out of the battery -- since every blob of lithium is more or less directly attached to a nanotube, which acts as a straight-line highway and part of the current collector. "The distance the ion needs to move is just a few nanometres through the lithium material," Nawa Founder and CTO Pascal Boulanger tells us, "instead of micrometres with a plain electrode."

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Scientists have shown shocking the tongue -- combined with a carefully designed sound program -- can reduce symptoms of tinnitus, not just while patients are being treated, but up to 1 year later. Science Magazine reports: In the team's experiment, 326 people with tinnitus sat for up to 1 hour at a time with a small plastic paddle on their tongue. Tiny electrodes in the paddle delivered an electrical current designed to broadly excite the brain, getting activity going through a number of interconnected regions. The electrical stimulation feels a little like pop rocks candy fizzing in your mouth, [says Hubert Lim, a biomedical engineer at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities]. Subjects also wore headphones that delivered a more targeted hit to the brain's auditory system. Each person heard a rapidly changing series of pure tones at different frequencies, against a background noise that sounds "kind of like electronic music," Lim says. The goal of the two together was to distract the brain by heightening its sensitivity, forcing it to suppress the activity that causes tinnitus. "The brain can only pay attention to so many things," Lim says. Over the 12 weeks of treatment, the patients' tinnitus symptoms improved dramatically. More than 80% of those who complied with the prescribed regimen saw an improvement. And they saw an average drop of about 14 points on a tinnitus severity score of one to 100, the researchers report today in Science Translational Medicine. When the team followed up after 12 months, 80% of the participants still had lower tinnitus scores, with average drops of 12.7 and 14.5 points.

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According to Taiwanese publication DigiTimes, Qualcomm is planning to launch new premium smartphones under its own brand name. It's reportedly partnering with ASUS to manufacture and distribute the devices globally. HotHardware reports: It would appear that Qualcomm's intent is to showcase ultra-premium experiences for Snapdragon Android phones in the market. This would in effect be a "super phone" of sorts that is designed by and powered by Qualcomm, but manufactured by ASUS. It would likely be a high-end, Snapdragon 875 flagship smartphone with all the bells and whistles that would compete with the best that other Android OEMs have to offer (we'd expect a stock Android experience as well). The most obvious comparison would be Microsoft's Surface line of premium hardware used to showcase new ideas and form factors. ASUS is already a known quantity in the Android smartphone market, and produces its own line of gaming smartphones like the lightning-fast ROG Phone 3, which is powered by Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 865+ SoC. However, ASUS would also be producing a device that would be directly competing against its own high-end offerings. It would seemingly make sense for Qualcomm to announce this new partnership and gaming smartphone brand at the upcoming Snapdragon Tech Summit, which will be held virtually December 1st through December 2nd. At that time, Qualcomm is expected to launch its Snapdragon 875 flagship SoC along with a new generation of Snapdragon 700 Series mid-range SoCs.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Trump administration is exploring restrictions on billionaire Jack Ma's Ant Group as well as Tencent Holdings Ltd. over concerns that their digital payment platforms threaten U.S. national security, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that risks infuriating China and disrupting what could be the world's largest initial public offering. Debate over how and whether to restrict Ant Group's and Tencent's payment systems has accelerated among senior U.S. officials in recent weeks though a final decision isn't imminent, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity about an idea that's still taking shape. U.S. officials are concerned that Ant Group and other Chinese fintech platforms will come to dominate global digital payments, the people said. That in turn could give China access to banking and personal data of hundreds of millions of people. Senior administration officials discussed the idea in a Sept. 30 meeting in the White House Situation Room, according to two people familiar with the matter. Yet officials acknowledge that it would be difficult to move forward until they sort out the mechanism, and that is proving difficult to do as the officials seek to find a legally sound approach. There's no indication the idea has been presented to President Donald Trump, whose approval would be required to proceed, two of the people said. The president fell ill with coronavirus a day after officials met to discuss China, and the issue hasn't made much progress at such a senior level in the days since, one of the people said. The report also notes that Ant, the online finance giant and owner of the Alipay e-payment system, "nears a dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong, possibly by the end of the month. An affiliate of Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Ant is preparing for an IPO of about $35 billion that would give it an overall valuation of $250 billion, twice that of Citigroup Inc."

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On Wednesday, Boom Supersonic unveiled the XB-1, a prototype aircraft for the company's planned commercial supersonic airplane. Ars Technica reports: The rollout marks the handoff from the design, development, and build phase to testing, said Blake Scholl, Boom founder and chief executive. After undergoing a series of ground tests, the 21-meter-long aircraft will begin a flight test campaign in the third quarter of 2021 at Mojave Air and Space Port, Scholl said. "We'll be supersonic by the end of next year," he added. This is about a year later than the company's original plans. Founded in 2014, Boom is planning to build a new generation of supersonic passenger jets and sell them to airlines. Scholl said the company has already pre-sold $6 billion worth of its full-size aircraft, called Overture. These airplanes are expected to seat 65 to 88 passengers and will travel at subsonic speeds over land and supersonic speeds over water -- more than twice as fast as current commercial aircraft. Boom hopes to begin flying Overture for the first time in 2026 and hopes the craft will be available for commercial flights before the end of the decade. To make that happen, the XB-1 demonstrator represents the first step, Scholl said, to test key technologies for Overture, including shape and materials. Perhaps the biggest difference between XB-1 and the full-scale aircraft, besides the size, is that XB-1 will use a smaller, off-the-shelf J85-15 turbojet engine. The company announced a partnership with Rolls Royce earlier this year to work on development of the Overture aircraft engine and expects to select a final design by the end of this year. The challenges in building this engine include designing the inlet to convert supersonic air flow to subsonic air flow before entering the engine and challenges with some of the internal components. However, Scholl said, "It's not much of a technology leap at all."

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Sony's recently-released PS5 teardown video gives us a closer look at the PS5, and confirms that the speed of the console's Wi-Fi antenna and USB ports are faster than those available in the Xbox Series X. GamesRadar+ reports: As spotted by VG247, the teardown confirms a few new hardware details about PS5. For starters, we know the console's Wi-Fi antenna supports the new Wi-Fi 6 standard, which allows for a new maximum speed of 9.6 Gbps -- more than twice the 3.5 Gbps ceiling for Wi-Fi 5. This doesn't mean your PS5 will be able to use all of that to send your download speeds through the roof. The practical benefit is that Wi-Fi 6 routers can better distribute all that speed to a bunch of devices at once, and to maintain their performance over time. So if you have a Wi-Fi 6 router and a home full of connected devices, there's a good chance you will notice the improvement. For reference, the Xbox Series X Wi-Fi antenna supports Wi-Fi 5. As for the USB ports, we already knew that PS5 has a USB-C port and a USB-A port on the front. The teardown video confirms the type-C port will support 10Gbps transfer speeds, and it confirms that the two USB-A ports on the back will as well. The type-A port on the front isn't as quick, so if you plan to plug in an external PS5 SSD make sure you use one of the ports on the back. Xbox Series X doesn't include any type-C ports, and all of its type-A ports run at the standard 5gbps speed. If you know that fast connection speeds will make a big difference to your play experience, you may want to lean toward PS5 -- but as always, the biggest deciding factor should be what games you want to play and how well each console plays them. The Verge also notes the PS5 includes removable sides, dust catchers, and storage expansion.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: On Wednesday, Facebook said it would take more preventive measures to keep political candidates from using it to manipulate the election's outcome and its aftermath. The company now plans to prohibit all political and issue-based advertising after the polls close on Nov. 3 for an undetermined length of time. And it said it would place notifications at the top of the News Feed notifying people that no winner had been decided until a victor was declared by news outlets. "This is shaping up to be a very unique election," Guy Rosen, vice president for integrity at Facebook, said in a call with reporters on Wednesday. Facebook is doing more to safeguard its platform after introducing measures to reduce election misinformation and interference on its site just last month. At the time, Facebook said it planned to ban new political ads for a contained period -- the week before Election Day -- and would act swiftly against posts that tried to dissuade people from voting. Mr. Zuckerberg also said Facebook would not make any other changes until there was an official election result. But the additional moves underscore the sense of emergency about the election, as the level of contentiousness has risen between Mr. Trump and his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr. On Tuesday, to help blunt further political turmoil, Facebook also said it would remove any group, page or Instagram account that openly identified with QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy movement. "We believe that we have done more than any other company over the past four years to help secure the integrity of elections," Mr. Rosen said.

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Google on Wednesday unveiled a pair of online products designed to better protect the security and privacy of Google users' information. From a report: The company said it will soon introduce a redesigned critical alert to warn Google Account users when a serious security threat is detected, such as a suspected hack. Unlike alerts that arrive in your email or on your phone, the new alert will automatically be displayed in the Google app you're using. To provide an additional layer of reassurance, Google says the new alert is spoof-proof, so you don't have to worry about whether the alert is legitimate. Google is also rolling out a new feature for Google Assistant called Guest mode that will allow you to use the voice-activated AI without your interactions being saved to your Google account. A simple voice command turns the feature on and off.

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An earlier universe existed before the Big Bang and can still be observed today, Sir Roger Penrose has said, as he received the Nobel Prize for Physics. From a report: Sir Roger, 89, who won the honour for his seminal work proving that black holes exist, said he had found six 'warm' points in the sky (dubbed 'Hawking Points') which are around eight times the diameter of the Moon. They are named after Prof Stephen Hawking, who theorised that black holes 'leak' radiation and eventually evaporate away entirely. The timescale for the complete evaporation of a black hole is huge, possibly longer than the age of our current universe, making them impossible to detect. However, Sir Roger believes that 'dead' black holes from earlier universes or 'aeons' are observable now. If true, it would prove Hawking's theories were correct. Sir Roger shared the World Prize in physics with Prof Hawking in 1988 for their work on black holes. Speaking from his home in Oxford, Sir Roger said: "I claim that there is observation of Hawking radiation. The Big Bang was not the beginning. There was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future. We have a universe that expands and expands, and all mass decays away, and in this crazy theory of mine, that remote future becomes the Big Bang of another aeon. So our Big Bang began with something which was the remote future of a previous aeon and there would have been similar black holes evaporating away, via Hawking evaporation, and they would produce these points in the sky, that I call Hawking Points. We are seeing them. These points are about eight times the diameter of the Moon and are slightly warmed up regions. There is pretty good evidence for at least six of these points." Sir Roger has recently published his theory of 'Hawking Points' in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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The remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex that lived some 67 million years ago have been sold at auction for $31.8 million, a world record for a fossilized dinosaur. From a report: The near-complete T. rex skeleton, named "Stan," now belongs to an anonymous buyer who secured the milestone bid at the "20th Century Evening Sale" held Tuesday at Christie's in New York. The hefty price tag dwarfs what the Field Museum in Chicago paid for its T. rex, named "Sue," which was procured for $8.4 million in 1997. Sue held the title of "most expensive dinosaur" for more than two decades -- until this week. Stan, also known as Lot 59, was expected to attract a price comparable to Sue, but the bidding war blew past the $6-8 million guide price within minutes and ended up at $27.5 million, with a few million more tacked on for commission fees and other costs. James Hyslop, head of Christie's science & natural history department, called the opportunity to buy Stan "a once-in-a-generation chance" in a statement. "There simply aren't T. rexes like this coming to market," he said. "It's an incredibly rare event when a great one is found." Stan was discovered in 1987 by its namesake, amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, at Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota. For decades, the remains of the iconic T. rex have been on display at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City, South Dakota. The specimen was put on sale at the request of a 2018 court resolution between the museum shareholders, who are brothers. Measuring some 40 feet in length and 13 feet tall, Stan is among the most complete T. rex fossils in the world. The specimen contains 188 bones, representing about 70 percent of the full skeleton. Its skeletal features suggest that it was a male. Because of the dinosaur's exceptional condition, casts of Stan have ended up at dozens of museums around the world.

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In one of the weirdest arrests of the year, at least five bar and cafe managers from the French city of Grenoble were taken into custody last week for running open WiFi networks at their establishments and not keeping logs of past connected users. From a report: The bar and cafe owners were arrested for allegedly breaking a 14-year-old French law that dictates that all internet service providers must keep logs on all their users for at least one year. According to local media reports, the bar and cafe owners claimed they were not aware that such a law even existed, let alone that it applied to them as they had not received notifications from their union, which usually sends alerts of industry-wide legal requirements. Nonetheless, French media pointed out that the law's text didn't only apply to internet service providers (ISPs) in the broad meaning of the word -- as in telecommunications providers -- but also to any "persons" who provide internet access, may it be free of charge or via password-protected networks.

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Spurred by Brexit, London is backing companies that will build satellites and haul them into orbit. From a report: Cornwall, in England's far southwest, is known for antique fishing villages and snug, cliff-lined beaches. Soon it may be the scene of something very different: a small but growing space industry. One day in a year or two, a modified Boeing 747 is expected to lift off from the long runway at the region's airport, head out over the Atlantic Ocean and soar into the stratosphere. There, a rocket will drop from below a wing, fire its engines and ferry a load of small satellites into orbit, while the plane returns to the airport. After six years of planning and fund-raising, construction of a bare-bones spaceport, budgeted at about 22 million pounds ($28 million), is beginning this month at the airport in Newquay. The anchor tenant is expected to be Virgin Orbit, a part of Richard Branson's Virgin universe. Its selling point: Putting satellites into orbit via aircraft can be done faster and with less infrastructure than earthbound rockets. It plans to bring its 747 (called the Cosmic Girl) and other gear being tested in the Mojave Desert to Britain with the help of $9.5 million from the U.K. Space Agency. "At the beginning, people laughed at us," said Melissa Thorpe, head of engagement for Spaceport Cornwall, the developer. "It took a lot of work to convince a lot of people." Among the better arguments: The spaceport, which is owned by the local government, could eventually provide 150 good jobs in what, despite its charm, is a region dependent on low-paid, seasonal work from tourism. Britain is doubling down on the always risky space business after, some would say, years of neglect. Besides Cornwall, the government is putting money behind several other potential launch sites, including one on the remote north coast of Scotland, which is being tailored for an environmentally friendly rocket to be manufactured nearby. This is all new for a country that does not have a deep history of rocketry or launching satellites into space. The case for spaceports in Britain is far from proven. In fact, some analysts say there are already too many such facilities, including in the United States.

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Kurt Nelson, a software engineer at Uber, writes an op-ed at TechCrunch: I've been a software engineer at Uber for two years, and I've also been a ride-hail driver. I regularly drove for Lyft in college, and while my day job involves writing code for the Uber Android app, I still make deliveries for app-based companies on my bike to understand the state of the gig economy. These experiences have made me realize a crucial factor in the gig economy: Uber works because it's cheap and it's quick. The instant gratification when we book a ride and a car shows up only minutes later gives us a sense of control. It's the most convenient thing in the world to go to your friend's house, the grocery store or the airport at the click of a button. But it's become clear to me that this is only possible because countless drivers are spending their personal time sitting in their cars, waiting to pick up a ride, completely unpaid. Workers are subsidizing the product with their free labor. I've decided to speak out against my employer because I know what it's like to work with no benefits. Before joining Uber, I worked a range of low-wage jobs from customer service at Disneyland to delivering pizza with no benefits. Uber is one of several large companies bankrolling California's Proposition 22. They've now contributed $47.5 million dollars to the campaign. At work, management tells us that passing Prop 22 is for the best because it is critical for the company's bottom line. Yet, a corporation's bottom line will not and should not influence my vote. Uber claims Prop 22 would be good for drivers, but that depends on Uber the company treating drivers better. [...] As a software engineer, I have a very different experience working for Uber than drivers do. Being classified as an employee affords me benefits including healthcare, a retirement plan, stock vesting and the ability to take paid vacation and sick leave. Uber drivers are not afforded these benefits, since Uber misclassifies them as independent contractors. Since January 1 of this year, the law has been clear: Gig drivers should be classified as employees. Yet Uber refuses to obey the law and is now seeking to get Prop 22 passed so they can write a new set of rules for themselves. There's a misconception that all Uber drivers are part-time. Maybe they drive as a fun hobby in retirement or pick up a few hours after class in college, as I did. These drivers exist, but the drivers who are essential to Uber's business are full-time workers.

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Alphabet's Google got a mixed reception at the U.S. Supreme Court as it sought to overturn a ruling that could force the company to pay billions of dollars for improperly using Oracle's copyrighted code in the Android operating system. From a report: Holding a low-tech telephone session in one of the biggest software fights in American history, the justices on Wednesday questioned Google's contention that it had no way to replicate the code without forcing millions of software developers to learn a new programming language. Justice Neil Gorsuch told Google's lawyer that Apple and other companies have "come up with phones that work just fine without engaging in this kind of copying." But Gorsuch also raised the possibility of returning the case to a federal appeals court for another look at Google's contention that it engaged in legitimate "fair use" of Oracle's Java programming language. Oracle says it's entitled to at least $8.8 billion in damages. A jury found that Google's code copying was a legitimate fair use, but a federal appeals court reversed that finding.

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A cross-party group of MEPs has written to Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, demanding information on the online retailer's monitoring of trade union activists and politicians in response to deleted job postings that described unions as "threats." From a report: The letter, from 37 members of the European parliament, said they were concerned Amazon deliberately targeted workers seeking to organise, and also questioned whether the company had "spied" on politicians. Trade unions last week called for a European commission investigation into whether Amazon's monitoring of workers was legal, after two job posts on the US company's website advertised "intelligence analyst" roles that referred to "labor organizing threats against the company." The advertisements, aimed at candidates with law enforcement or military experience, also mentioned the monitoring of "hostile political leaders." The posts grouped organised labour with hate groups and terrorism, two illegal activities, and listed French and Spanish language skills among the preferred qualifications, suggesting European workers could be targets. Amazon deleted the posts after Vice News first reported on them.

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