Google has added a new feature that lets you figure out what song is stuck in your head by humming, whistling or singing -- a much more useful version of the kind of song-matching audio feature that it and competitors like Apple's Shazam have offered previously. From a report: As of today, users will be able to open either the latest version of the mobile Google app, or the Google Search widget, and then tap the microphone icon, and either verbally ask to search a song or hit the 'Search a song button' and start making noises. The feature should be available to anyone using Google in English on iOS, or across over 20 languages already on Android, and the company says it will be growing that user group to more languages on both platforms in the future. Unsurprisingly, it's powered behind the scenes by machine learning algorithms developed by the company. Google says that it's matching tech won't require you to be a Broadway star or even a choir member -- it has built-in abilities to accommodate for various degrees of musical sensibility, and will provide a confidence score as a percentage alongside a number of possible matches. Clicking on any match will return more info about both artist and track, as well as music videos, and links that let you listen to the full song in the music app of your choice.

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The Covid-19 treatment remdesivir has no substantial effect on a patient's chances of survival [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], a clinical trial by the World Health Organization has found, delivering a significant blow to hopes of identifying existing medicines to treat the disease. From a report: Results from the WHO's highly anticipated Solidarity trial, which studied the effects of remdesivir and three other potential drug regimens in 11,266 hospitalised patients, found that none of the treatments "substantially affected mortality" or reduced the need to ventilate patients, according to a copy of the study seen by the Financial Times. "These remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir and interferon regimens appeared to have little effect on in-hospital mortality," the study found. The results of the WHO trial also showed that the drugs had little effect on how long patients stayed in hospital. However, WHO researchers said the study was primarily designed to assess impact on in-hospital mortality. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed. Remdesivir was one of a series of drugs used to treat US President Donald Trump after he tested positive for Covid-19. It was developed by US drugmaker Gilead Sciences, initially as a potential medicine to treat Ebola.

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U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said the agency will consider President Donald Trump's request to weaken legal protections for social media companies such as Twitter. From a report: The FCC will begin a rulemaking to "clarify" the meaning of a law that gives broad legal immunity to social media companies for their handling of users' posts, Pai said in an emailed statement. The action follows a request by the Trump administration for regulators to dilute the decades-old law that Facebook, Twitter and Google say is crucial. The request was called for in an executive order that Trump signed in May. Tech trade groups, civil liberties organizations and legal scholars have slammed the action and said it isn't likely to survive a court challenge.

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A ransomware gang going by the of Egregor has leaked data it claims to have obtained from the internal networks of two of today's largest gaming companies -- Ubisoft and Crytek. An anonymous reader writes: Data allegedly taken from each company has been published on the ransomware gang's dark web portal on Tuesday. Details about how the Egregor gang obtained the data remain unclear. Ransomware gangs like Egregor regularly breach companies, steal their data, encrypt files, and ask for a ransom to decrypt the locked data. However, in many incidents, ransomware gangs are also get caught and kicked out of networks during the data exfiltration process, and files are never encrypted. Nevertheless, they still extort companies, asking victims for money to not leak sensitive files. Usually, when negotiations break down, ransomware gangs post a partial leak of the stolen files on so-called leak sites. On Tuesday, leaks for both Crytek and Ubisoft were posted on the Egregor portal at the same time, with threats from the ransomware crew to leak more files in the coming days.

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One experienced virologist raises concerns about safety protocols and a lack of training.

He was hiking with his father in Alberta, Canada, when he stumbled upon the Hadrosaur remains.

Two bits of discarded Russian and Chinese space hardware may pass within less than 25m of each other.

YouTube said Thursday that it would no longer allow content that targets individuals and groups with conspiracy theories, specifically QAnon and its antecedent, "pizzagate." From a report: "Today, we are taking another step in our efforts to curb hate and harassment by removing more conspiracy theory content used to justify real-world violence," the company announced on its blog. The new rules, an expansion of YouTube's existing hate and harassment policies, will prohibit content that "threatens or harrasses someone by suggesting they are complicit in one of these harmful conspiracies, such as QAnon or Pizzagate," the post read. YouTube said it would be enforcing the updated policy immediately and plans to "ramp up in the weeks to come."

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Amazon will not have to pay the UK's new digital services tax on products it sells directly to consumers but small traders who sell products on its site will face increased charges. From a report: The tax, which aims to get tech companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook to pay more tax in the UK, is forecast to eventually bring in about $645 million annually to the exchequer. Amazon has already stated that the 2% tax on revenues made in the UK will be passed on to sellers but it will not be adding the charge to the cost of advertising on its platform. According to a report in the Times, Amazon, which paid only $18.5 million in corporation tax on total UK revenues of $17.7 billion last year, will not have to pay the tax on goods it sells directly. The new tax is not being levied on sales, which would also penalise online retailers such as Tesco and John Lewis, but on the service fees that companies such as Amazon and Google charge third parties. With Amazon's third-party sellers facing a 2% rise in the amount they pay, the US retailer is effectively getting a price advantage on competing goods it sells directly to consumers. "This seems to me to be absolutely outrageous," said Lord Leigh of Hurley, the Conservative peer and former party treasurer, in the House of Lords. "It is clear that the UK government is not taxing Amazon properly and is allowing it to avoid tax on its own sales through the marketplace."

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Commercial rocket ventures including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin should get a clearer path to space under new regulations that oversee non-government launches. From a report: The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday announced it is replacing decades-old rules as it adapts to rapid growth in the industry to propel satellites and, eventually, private citizens into space. "This rule paves the way for an industry that is moving at lightning speed," FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said in a press release. "We are simplifying the licensing process and enabling industry to move forward in a safe manner." In addition to SpaceX and Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit, companies founded by Richard Branson, are also trying to cash in on space tourism and small satellite launches. Other companies include Northrop Grumman, United Launch Alliance and Rocket Lab.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to issue a subpoena on Tuesday to Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey after the social-media company blocked a pair of New York Post articles that made new allegations about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, which his campaign has denied. From a report: The subpoena would require the Twitter executive to testify on Oct. 23 before the committee, according to the Republicans who announced the hearing. GOP lawmakers are singling out Twitter because it prevented users from posting links to the articles, which the Post said were based on email exchanges with Hunter Biden, the Democratic candidate's son, provided by allies of President Trump. Those people in turn said they received them from a computer-repair person who found them on a laptop, according to the Post. "This is election interference, and we are 19 days out from an election," Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a committee member who discussed the subpoena with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), told reporters. "Never before have we seen active censorship of a major press publication with serious allegations of corruption of one of the two candidates for president."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in January, Google Health, the branch of Google focused on health-related research, clinical tools, and partnerships for health care services, released an AI model trained on over 90,000 mammogram X-rays that the company said achieved better results than human radiologists. Google claimed that the algorithm could recognize more false negatives -- the kind of images that look normal but contain breast cancer -- than previous work, but some clinicians, data scientists, and engineers take issue with that statement. In a rebuttal published today in the journal Nature, over 19 coauthors affiliated with McGill University, the City University of New York (CUNY), Harvard University, and Stanford University said that the lack of detailed methods and code in Google's research "undermines its scientific value." Science in general has a reproducibility problem -- a 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had tried but failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment -- but it's particularly acute in the AI field. At ICML 2019, 30% of authors failed to submit their code with their papers by the start of the conference. Studies often provide benchmark results in lieu of source code, which becomes problematic when the thoroughness of the benchmarks comes into question. One recent report found that 60% to 70% of answers given by natural language processing models were embedded somewhere in the benchmark training sets, indicating that the models were often simply memorizing answers. Another study -- a meta-analysis of over 3,000 AI papers -- found that metrics used to benchmark AI and machine learning models tended to be inconsistent, irregularly tracked, and not particularly informative.

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I finished Borgen last night. Three seasons, and I would love to watch the fourth season right now. As I do my work this morning, my mind keeps drifting back to how the last season ends. How the conflicts get resolved, and the questions that are left unanswered. Every character is about to embark on something new. But they got there by stretching themselves, taking a risk, and coming out okay. Not perfectly, they pretty much all got hurt, but in the end they more or less have a clean slate, lots of possibilities, and you really wonder what's next.

You end up loving them. They bare their souls to you. You see them weak, and dealing with it. To pull that off, in TV, is pretty amazing. And that all that comes through from reading titles in a Danish-language show. The characters at times switch into perfect English, usually British-accented English, mainly because they're doing something international.

I don't want to give you any spoilers, so I can't tell you the roles the various characters play, but I will say that this is sort of like the Danish equivalent of The West Wing, only more adult, and less schmaltzy. The writing is very good, but it's not Aaron Sorkin, and that's neither a plus or minus.

They also have an English-dubbed version. I tried that at first, but the subtitles were for the Danish version, and there are differences. I prefer shows, even in English, that have subtitles. I think dubbing is generally cheesy, anyway.

After finishing it, I went back to my BingeWorthy page and changed the rating from Loved to Best, the top rating. If you have the time, and can read titles, I would put this on my watchlist.

YouTube said this week it would remove videos from YouTube containing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, expanding its current rules against falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the pandemic. From a report: The video platform said it would now ban any content with claims about COVID-19 vaccines that contradict consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization. YouTube said in an email that this would include removing claims that the vaccine will kill people or cause infertility, or that microchips will be implanted in people who receive the vaccine.

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An artificial rope bridge across a divided forest could help save the ape, a type of gibbon, from extinction.