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upstart writes:Warmer, More Crowded Cities Bring Out the Rats:

day of the dalek writes:Eagles or Chiefs? Who's your pick to win the Super Bowl?Anyone can make a guess, but can we predict the winner with some skill? At first glance, the Eagles were 14-3 during the regular season, but the Chiefs had a slightly better record at 15-2. Therefore, we should pick the Chiefs, right? As college football commentator Lee Corso would say, not so fast, my friend.A game like chess has no luck at all. You might say you got lucky if your opponent made a poor decision, but that's really just human error. When I make a move like to castle kingside, that move always happens in the exact same way, with no luck involved. In football, however, there's a lot of random chance. A gust of wind might blow a field goal wide right, or a receiver might slip on a slick field and miss an otherwise easy pass. Or the officials might miss a call due to their own human error. Research shows that there's a lot of luck in football, and it doesn't always even out over a 16 or 17 game season. If we want to predict the outcome of future games skillfully, we need a way to distinguish lucky teams from good teams.The most accurate prediction systems rely heavily on margin of victory instead of a team's won-loss record. If the quarterback throws a pass to a wide open receiver, but the receiver slips on a slick field and doesn't catch the pass, it might prevent the team from scoring a touchdown on that drive. Luck might cost the team a touchdown, but it's a lot less likely for bad luck to cost that team two or three touchdowns. When teams win or lose games by larger margins, they're more insulated from the effects of luck. A team that wins a lot of close games might well be getting lucky, but a team that's blowing out their opponents is probably just a really good team. Strength of schedule also matters. If a team is winning a lot of blowout games but against lesser competition, they're probably not as good as their record or margins of victory might suggest.Another factor is the pace of play. A team that plays quickly is going to run more plays during a game, and that will also result in more scoring. A good team that plays quickly will probably win by larger margins, but a bad team with a rapid tempo is going to lose by larger margins. Many good prediction systems also take this into account, as well as that teams also tend to perform slightly better when they're at home than on the road.During the regular season, the Chiefs outscored their opponents by a total of 59 points, but the Eagles had a much larger scoring margin of 160 points. But what about their schedules?Two of the best rating systems are ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) and Jeff Sagarin's ratings. FPI shows that the Chiefs played the 20th toughest schedule, compared to the Eagles with the 23rd strongest schedule. Sagarin also has the Chiefs' schedule at #20, but the Eagles at #30. According to Sagarin, the average Chiefs opponent was 0.97 points tougher than the average Eagles opponent. Over the course of the season, this is worth about 16.49 points. If the Eagles played the same schedule as the Chiefs, we would expect the Chiefs to have a scoring margin of 75.49 points. That's a little better, but still not nearly as good as the Eagles.The advanced metrics generally agree that the Eagles are the better team. If we subtract their FPI ratings, we would expect the Eagles to be favored by 2.1 points. Sagarin's ratings suggest Eagles by 4.08. On paper, the advanced metrics say the Eagles have a small edge over the Chiefs. But those predictions are actually the mean (or very close to it) of a statistical distribution of possible outcomes. FPI favors the Eagles by 2.1, but gives them a 56.1% chance of winning. Although we can predict football games with some skill, this is why we still have to play the games.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Google offering 'voluntary exit' for employees working on Pixel, Android:

taylorvich writes:https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/22

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upstart writes:Giant Study Questions Link Between Autism and Maternal Health:

hubie writes:Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads:

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fliptop writes:Automakers Tesla and BMW have launched a major lawsuit against the European Commission over tariffs imposed on electric vehicles imported from China:

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taylorvich writes:https://newatlas.com/technology/artificial-gills-unlock-long-range-underwater-robots/

upstart writes:Are we all aliens? NASA's returned asteroid samples hold the ingredients of life from a watery world:

An Anonymous Coward writes:The Fediverse - including Mastodon, Pixelfed, and others - is experiencing explosive exponential growth with over 700,000 new users, and 100,000,000 posts in January.Pixelfed alone is growing 100k users per WEEK now, has gone 10x in a month.Mastodon servers are welcoming influxes, and new servers are standing up at a rapid pace, with new active daily users up 200k in Jan, about +25%, and posts up by a similar +30% to 16 million/month.Tumblr is planning to federate.Forum software NodeBB has officially launched their 4.0 version, which includes ActivityPub support.https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-report-101/

upstart writes:US to deploy molten salt reactors to turn wastewater into freshwater:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/how-does-deepseek-r1-really-fare-against-openais-best-reasoning-models/

upstart writes:Glitch that casts a silence spell on some PCs has no workaround, but Microsoft promises a solution is coming:

A 2015 article in The Atlantic describes the problem of antibiotic resistance and some of its causes (alternative link):

owl writes:http://www.nablaman.com/relay/about.php

canopic jug writes:The site The Nerd Reich has an analysis of the seeming chaos being inflicted upon the US from within at the moment. Specifically, Elon Musk's attempt to destroy the United States government is a methodical execution of the "network state" blueprint, not random chaos.

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/how-one-youtuber-is-trying-to-poison-the-ai-bots-stealing-her-content/

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fliptop writes:President Donald Trump said Monday night thatMicrosoft was in contention to buy TikTok, having previously said that he is eager to forge a deal that would "save" the popular video app from a ban:

How Chinese AI Startup DeepSeek Made a Model that Rivals OpenAIhttps://www.wired.com/story/deepseek-china-model-ai/

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upstart writes:Phone Metadata Suddenly Not So 'Harmless' When It's The FBI's Data Being Harvested:

owl writes:https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040409-00/?p=39873

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upstart writes:Brendan Carr dumps plan to ban bulk billing deals that lock renters into one ISP:

Samantha Wright writes:

fliptop writes:Chevron, one of the world's largest oil companies, has announced plans to enter the rapidly growing field of artificial intelligence by building natural gas power plants directly connected to data centers:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/ai-haters-build-tarpits-to-trap-and-trick-ai-scrapers-that-ignore-robots-txt/

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://tails.net/news/version_6.11/index.en.html

AnonTechie writes:Scale AI and CAIS Unveil Results of Humanity's Last Exam, a Groundbreaking New Benchmark

upstart writes:New research "Computer-Use Agent" AI model can perform multi-step tasks through a web browser:

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fliptop writes:An undersea fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged on Sunday, likely as a result of external influence, Latvia said, triggering an investigation by local and NATO maritime forces in the Baltic Sea:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/28/1110613/mice-with-two-dads-crispr/Mice with two dads have been created using CRISPR

upstart writes:Physicist used interaction graphs to show how pieces attack and defend to analyze 20,000 top matches:

upstart writes:Now-fixed web bugs allowed hackers to remotely unlock and start any of millions of Subarus. More disturbingly, they could also access at least a year of cars' location histories-and Subaru employees still can:

Facebook's Internal Policy Makers Decided That Linux is MalwareAn Anonymous Coward writes:https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20250127#sitenews

upstart writes:Backdoor infecting VPNs used "magic packets" for stealth and security:

Motor Trend reports on FSD in their long term test 2023 Model Y, https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2024-tesla-model-y-long-range-yearlong-review-update-9-full-self-driving-fsd-version-13/ They weren't too impressed with the first software version that came with the car,

fliptop writes:Technology is advancing at an exponential rate, but we have very little ability to control it if something goes horribly wrong. Many experts are warning that some of the new technologies that are being developed right now represent very serious existential threats to humanity. In other words, they believe that we could literally be creating technology that could wipe us out someday. Unfortunately, the scientific community is not showing any restraint at all. If something is possible, they want to try to do it. All over the globe, hordes of mad scientists are feverishly rushing into the unknown, and it is quite likely that the consequences will be horrific. The following are 5 super creepy new technologies that should chill all of us to the core:

owl writes:https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/surviving-hollywood-industry-shifts-tv-writer-1236104216/

owl writes:https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2025/01/the-invalid-68030-instruction-that-accidentally-allowed-the-mac-classic-ii-to-successfully-boot-up/

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canopic jug writes:The Association for Computing Machinery has a post by George Neville-Neil of FreeBSD fame comparing LLMs to drunken plagiarists: