Google has patented motorized, omnidirectional virtual-reality sneakers that may solve the "limited space" problem associated with the interactive computer-generated experience. Ars Technica reports: Google's patent describes what are essentially motorized VR roller skates that will let the user walk normally while the motors and wheels work to negate your natural locomotion and keep you inside the VR safe zone. As the patent puts it, Google's new kicks will let you walk "seemingly endlessly in the virtual environment" while keeping you in one spot in real life. Google's shoe solution would track the user's feet, just like how VR controllers are tracked today. The tracking would know when you're too close to the virtual walls of your VR area, and the system would wheel you back into place. Patents are always written to give the broadest possible coverage of an idea, but Google's patent shows normal wheels, tracks, and even omnidirectional mecanum wheels as possible wheels for the VR shoe bottoms. Omnidirectional wheels would be great, as they would allow you to do things like sidestep, while still having your position corrected by the shoes.

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PM hits back at 'false assertions' by US president, who accused Islamabad of not doing 'a damn thing' for Washington.

Many in this Arizona border town want armed vigilantes, who've vowed to round up undocumented migrants, to leave.

Yemen's Houthi rebels say they have suspended drone and missile attacks against the Saudi-UAE-led coalition.

The value of Bitcoin has hit a new low of $4,951, bringing the total value of all Bitcoin in existence to below $87 billion. Much of the turmoil can be attributed to the split of Bitcoin Cash on November 15th. The Bitcoin offshoot has been split into two different cryptocurrencies, which are now in competition with each other. The BBC reports: Bitcoin exchange Kraken said in a blog post that it regarded one of the two new Bitcoin Cash crypto-currencies -- Bitcoin SV -- as "an extremely risky investment." At its peak, in November 2017, it briefly hit $19,783 - which means the price has fallen by about 75%. After the excitements of last year when the price soared to nearly $20,000 and then tumbled, Bitcoin has been rather dull and stable for much of 2018, settling between $6,000 and $7,000.

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July 1998: XML-RPC for Newbies.

I changed my Twitter name to One more thing. Of course I stole that line from one of the best of all time.

I did some work today on the XML-RPC debugger. Look in the Tests menu. It pre-populates the form with one of the standard tests from the old days. It's also preconfigured to talk to betty.userland.com, the same server we used in the late 90s, with all new code, written in JavaScript running in Node. Should be 100 percent backward compatible. More work to come, but wanted to show this to you all now. Ask questions here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: It may sit in the shade of China and India, but tech has real growth potential in Southeast Asia. Home to a cumulative 650 million people, the region's digital economy is forecast to triple in size and reach $240 billion over the next seven years, according to Google's third "e-Conomy SEA" report. The annual study, which is authored by Google and Singapore sovereign fund Temasek and is arguably the most comprehensive research program for tech in Southeast Asia, has raised its estimation for the size of the digital economy in 2025 from an initial $200 billion after seeing the region reach "an inflection point." Southeast Asia has 350 million internet users across its six largest countries -- that's more than the entire U.S. population -- and the latest data suggests its internet economy will reach $72 billion this year, up from $50 billion last year and $19.1 billion in 2015. Online travel accounts for the majority of that revenue ($30 billion) ahead of e-commerce ($23 billion), online media ($11 billion) and ride-hailing ($8 billion), and that rough breakdown is likely to be maintained up until 2025, according to the report. Indonesia, the world's fourth largest country by population, is forecast to hit $100 billion by 2025, ahead of Thailand ($43 billion) and Vietnam ($33 billion), with strong growth forecast across the board. Indonesia and Vietnam, in particular, have seen their respective digital economies more than triple since 2015, according to the data.

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A kidney was flown thousands of meters by a drone without incurring any damage. Reader Wave723 shares a report: When a patient who needs an organ transplantation is finally matched with a donor, every second matters. A longer wait between when an organ is removed from a donor and when it is placed into a recipient is associated with poorer organ function following transplantation. To maximize the chances of success, organs must be shipped from A to B as quickly and safely as possible -- and a recent test run suggests that drones are up to the task. [...] Last March, they (Dr. Joseph Scalea of the University of Maryland Medical Center and his team) received news that a kidney -- which was not healthy enough to be used in a transplantation -- was available for research. Over the course of roughly 24 hours, the kidney was shipped more than 1,600 kilometers (km) to Baltimore and the drone was set up for its first delivery mission. The results were published in the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine on 6 November. In total, the little bean-shaped organ was airborne for a little more than an hour over the course of 14 flight missions. For the farthest mission, the kidney flew 2,415 meters, a distance similar to the length of potential shipment routes for donor organs between inner city hospitals. The researchers found that the temperature of the kidney remained stable, at a cool 2.5 degrees Celsius, throughout the test runs. Air pressure corresponded with altitude, and the drone-borne organ achieved a maximum speed of 67.6 km/h. In an interesting twist, the kidney was subjected to slightly fewer vibrations when transported in the drone compared to a control delivery mission in a fixed wing plane (a dual engine turboprop King Air). Biopsies of the kidney before and after drone transportation revealed no damage from the journey, suggesting that the experiment -- which the research team believes is the first ever use of a drone for organ delivery -- was a success.

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Daniel's Hosting, one of the largest providers of Dark Web hosting services, was hacked this week and taken offline, ZDNet reports. From a report: The hack took place on Thursday, November 15, according to Daniel Winzen, the software developer behind the hosting service. "As per my analysis it seems someone got access to the database and deleted all accounts," he said in a message posted on the DH portal today. Winzen said the server's root account was also deleted, and that all 6,500+ Dark Web services hosted on the platform are now gone. "Unfortunately, all data is lost and per design, there are no backups," Winzen told ZDNet in an email today. "I will bring my hosting back up once the vulnerability has been identified and fixed."

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A record 79 candidates are in the race for the Nigerian presidential election scheduled in February.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The relatively new blockchain gaming industry is about to take a massive step forward as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are making their way onto the PlayStation 4. Arcade Distillery, a game developer that creates titles for PS Vita, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, is gearing up to launch a new game for the PS4 built around the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Plague Hunters is a single-player-focused, turn-based strategy RPG with some PvP elements and the sequel to the successful Plague Road. The game, which will be free-to-play and feature a marketplace for P2P transactions, has passed the Sony review process, passing all of PlayStation's terms and conditions, despite containing numerous elements of blockchain tech. This marks the first time any blockchain game has been able to accomplish this feat. Similar to other blockchain games, it looks like Plague Hunter's in-game assets, including units, weapons and other items, will be pegged to NFTs.

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NASA is considering selling seats on the spacecraft that will ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station, offering rides to the public while opening another line of revenue as the agency attempts to broaden its appeal [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: On several occasions, Russia has flown wealthy individuals who paid millions for the ride to space. And a trio of private companies backed by billionaires, is also looking to fly tourists out of the atmosphere. But except for a couple of rare exceptions, such as Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who was killed when the space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, NASA has not allowed private citizens on its rockets. "Just like in the early days of aviation, with barnstorming, these initial activities will help build the infrastructure and the foundation that can lead to future innovations that, frankly, we cannot imagine right now," said Michael Gold, the general counsel of Maxar Technologies, who is leading the advisory council's policy reform effort. The proposal, backed Friday by a NASA advisory subcommittee, is still in the nascent stage, and is part of moves by the agency to better insert itself into the public consciousness by working with the private sector. The proposals would have to be approved by the entire advisory council and then forwarded to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. Friday's meeting comes two months after Bridenstine announced he was standing up the committee, and tasking it to look at how the agency could better partner with industry. He said then that he wants NASA and its astronauts "embedded into the American culture." On Friday, he reiterated the point, saying: "The reality is, we're in a new era now."

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America's next robot rover will be sent to a 50km-wide depression that once had water running through it.