italian – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Italian cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail loses $170 million

One of the biggest problems with cryptocurrency exchanges is that they’re a juicy, enticing target for high-tech criminals. Case in point, Italian exchange BitGrail, which lost $170 million worth of Nano tokens, a little-known digital coin previously called RaiBlocks. BitGrail is the second exchange that lost of massive amount of money this year — and it’s only February — following Tokyo-based Coincheck, which lost between $400 and $534 million worth of coins in a cyberattack on its internet-connected wallet back in January. BitGrail announced on its website that it lost $170 million to fraudulent transactions and that it has already reported them to authorities. It has suspended all withdrawals and deposits “in order to conduct further verifications.” However, unlike Coincheck, which promised to give users their money back, BitGrail founder Francesco “The Bomber” Firano announced on Twitter that there’s no way to refund 100 percent of what users lost. While BitGrail’s loss is in no way as massive as Mt. Gox’s , it’s still steeped in controversy. The Nano team said that they have no “reason to believe the loss was due to an issue in the Nano protocol” and that the “problems appear to be related to BitGrail’s software.” They also published a copy of their conversation with the exchange’s founder and said that Franceso suggested they modify the ledger to cover his losses. It doesn’t help that BitGrail recently required users to verify their accounts to be able to withdraw their coins beyond a certain amount, and some people have reportedly been waiting for verification since December. More recently, the exchange announced that it would no longer serve non-EU users due to what it said are legal complications. Team Nano wrote in their latest statement: “We now have sufficient reason to believe that Firano has been misleading the Nano Core Team and the community regarding the solvency of the BitGrail exchange for a significant period of time.” On Twitter, Francesco said Nano’s claims are nothing but “unfounded allegations.” He added that he told the police that the Nano team published their private convo, which could compromise the investigation. In the wake of the unfounded accusations made against me by the dev team and of the dissemination of private conversations that compromise police investigations, Bitgrail s.r.l. is forced to contact the police in order to protect its rights and users — Francesco The Bomber (@bomberfrancy) February 10, 2018 NANO on BitGrail have been stolen. Unfortunately there is no way to give it back to you at 100% (we only got 4 MLN XRN right now). The devs, as you have guessed, dont want to collaborate — Francesco The Bomber (@bomberfrancy) February 9, 2018 Source: The Wall Street Journal

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Italian cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail loses $170 million

The IRS Decides Who To Audit By Data Mining Social Media

In America the Internal Revenue Service used to pick who got audited based on math mistakes or discrepancies with W-2 forms — but not any more. schwit1 shares an article from the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law describing their new technique: The IRS is now engaging in data mining of public and commercial data pools (including social media) and creating highly detailed profiles of taxpayers upon which to run data analytics. This article argues that current IRS practices, mostly unknown to the general public, are violating fair information practices. This lack of transparency and accountability not only violates federal law regarding the government’s data collection activities and use of predictive algorithms, but may also result in discrimination. While the potential efficiencies that big data analytics provides may appear to be a panacea for the IRS’s budget woes, unchecked these activities are a significant threat to privacy [PDF]. Other concerns regarding the IRS’s entrÃ©e into big data are raised including the potential for political targeting, data breaches, and the misuse of such information. While tax evasion cost the U.S.$3 trillion between 2000 and 2009, one of the report’s authors argues that people should be aware âoethat what they say and do onlineâ could be used against them. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The IRS Decides Who To Audit By Data Mining Social Media

Google Translate Is About To Get a Lot Better, Thanks To Its Machine Learning Push

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is offering a big new update that should affect anyone who’s ever used Google’s translation services. From a report on CNBC: The new version will be rolling out in 2017 via Google Cloud, Pichai said. “We have improved our translation ability more in one single year than all our improvements over the last 10 years combined, ” Pichai told investors in a quarterly call, after parent company Alphabet reported mixed results. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ötzi the Iceman Was Making Prosciutto Over 5,000 Years Ago

New research on Ötzi the Iceman, an exquisitely preserved 5, 300-year-old human found in a European glacier, shows that he ate a form of dry-cured meat known as “speck”—a fatty, bacon-like snack that’s still found on charcuterie boards today. Read more…

Microsoft beats Google to offline translation on iOS

Microsoft updated its Translator app to support offline translation on Android back in February, and it’s just added the same feature to the iOS version. Like the Android app, the translation works by way of deep learning. Behind the scenes a neural network , trained on millions of phrases, does the heavy lifting, and the translations are claimed to be of “comparable” quality to online samples. Your mileage will apparently “vary by language and topic, ” but even an adequate translation is probably worth it when you’re saving on data costs abroad. When Microsoft launched the offline functionality for Android, it was really bringing the experience in line with Google’s offering on the platform. But while the search giant’s Translate app for Android does offline translation of text (and even photos containing text ), its iOS app is online-only. That makes Microsoft’s Translate app the first from a major company to offer the functionality, and the first ever on the platform to use a neural network to achieve it. The iOS app supports 43 languages , although you’ll have to download the relevant libraries before going offline. That’s a lot more than the nine the Android version launched with, but Microsoft says it’s updating that app to support the expanded catalog. Supported languages include Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish. I fed the app a couple of very pretty lines from Jules Verne’s French novel Journey to the Center of the Earth , and it did a pretty decent job. The official translation is as follows: The undulation of these infinite numbers of mountains, whose snowy summits make them look as if covered by foam, recalled to my remembrance the surface of a storm-beaten ocean. If I looked towards the west, the ocean lay before me in all its majestic grandeur, a continuation as it were, of these fleecy hilltops. And here’s Microsoft’s neural-network powered, offline translation: The ripples of these endless mountains, their layers of snow seemed to make foaming, reminded my recollection the surface of a choppy sea. If I went back to the West, the Ocean is developing in its majestic scope, as a continuation of these fleecy summits. It’s lost its structure, and is no longer grammatically sound, but all of the meaning is still there. If all you’re going to do is translate a menu or a sign post, this is pretty impressive stuff. The app is a free download from the iOS App Store and Google Play . It’s a relatively small download at 60MB, but each language packs will add around 250MB to that figure. Via: VentureBeat Source: Microsoft Translator blog , (App Store)

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Microsoft beats Google to offline translation on iOS

We Might Finally Be Able to Read Ancient Scrolls Damaged By Vesuvius Eruption

Pompeii has the best press, but the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD also buried the town of Herculaneum. Charred scrolls were recovered from the town library in 1752, and Italian scientists just discovered it might be possible to use X-ray technology to read them. Their findings were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Read more…

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We Might Finally Be Able to Read Ancient Scrolls Damaged By Vesuvius Eruption

Animation software used by Studio Ghibli will soon be free

You may not have heard of Toonz animation software, but you’ve no doubt seen work it was used in: Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away and Tale of the Princess Kaguya (above), or the animated series Futurama . Now, the Toonz Ghibli Edition used by legendary Japanese filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki is going open-source , making it free to use by studios and novice animators alike. The deal came after Japanese publisher Dwango acquired the software from Italian developer Digital Video. It’s now focusing on customization and training, but will still sell a premium version to companies “at a very competitive price.” Studio Ghibli’s imaging director Atsushi Okui says, “we are happy to hear that this open-source version contains the Ghibli Edition. We hope that many people inside and outside of the animation industry will utilize this software for their work.” Toonz, which debuted way back in 1993, is used to convert hand-drawn and rasterized art into vector graphics. From there, it can be animated in 2D by creating “skeletons” for characters, providing a similar animation workflow to 3D projects. The open-source announcement means that a production-ready version of the software, which used to run thousands of dollars, is now free for aspiring editors. Studio Ghibli says it first chose the app in 1995 for Princess Mononoke “to combine hand-drawn animation with the digitally painted ones seamlessly … in order to continue producing theater-quality animation without addition stress.” It takes considerable effort to learn software as deep as Toonz, but now that it’s free, it’ll be easier for aspiring animators to become the next Miyazaki or Takahata. It will be presented officially at Anime Japan in Tokyo, which starts on March 26th. Via: Cartoon Brew Source: Toonz

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Animation software used by Studio Ghibli will soon be free

The first drawings of neurons

In 1837, Italian physician Camilo Golgi devised a reaction to stain the wispy dendrites and axons of neurons, making it possible to see brain cells in situ . In 1875, he published his first scientific drawing made possibly by his chemical reaction, seen here. It’s an illustration of the never fibers, gray matter, and other components of a dog’s olfactory bulb. ” The First Neuron Drawings, 1870s ” (The Scientist)

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The first drawings of neurons

The Least Unhealthy Items at Seven Popular Fast Food Joints

Fast food is hardly health food, but when you’re on the road or it’s late at night, sometimes it’s your only option. These are the menu options to look for that will fill you up without filling you out. Read more…

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The Least Unhealthy Items at Seven Popular Fast Food Joints

Skype’s real-time translator now understands French and German—along with the existing English, Ital

Skype’s real-time translator now understands French and German —along with the existing English, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish. Read more…