Technology is changing faster than our ability to make sense of it, yet much of it is geared towards dealing with an uncertain future. Each episode of this series curates one genius moment being developed now to improve our lives tomorrow.
Nikolay Nikolov
This year’s International Conference for Robotics and Systems was like a clash of the robot dog titans as a video emerged of the Boston DynamicsSpotMini hanging out with the ANYbotics robot, called ANYmal.
According to ANYbotics’ cofounder Péter Fankhauser, it’s no coincidence that the design and technology is converging, but it’s too early to fear the rise of the robot dog empire.
Malone is heading into his fourth year with the team, leading the squad to a 46-36 record last season. He has a 119-127 mark in his first three seasons with the organization.
The 47-year-old took over the Nuggets in 2015 after the team went 30-52 the year before, and he has overseen steady improvements each year.
While there was speculation he was going to be fired after a slow start to the 2017-18 season, Malone never felt he was on the hot seat, perSam Amickof The Athletic:
“There was not one time that I thought my job was in jeopardy. The reason I feel that was that, No. 1, I’m confident in the job that I’ve done, to take a team that when I took over (in 2015) had won 30 games, and took them from 30 to 46 in three years with young players. It’s tough to win and develop talent at the same time. So we’ve been able to win, develop all our young players, create an identity, create a culture, create excitement. We had 14 sellouts (last season). I think behind Philly, we were No. 2 in the NBA in new season tickets sales. So across the board, it’s check-check. All positives.”
These arguments likely also contributed to his extension, but now the pressure is on heading into 2018-19.
As well as the Nuggets played last year, they still missed the playoffs by one game and the organization hasn’t reached the postseason since 2013. Malone personally has been a head coach for five seasons, including two with the Sacramento Kings, and has never taken a team to the playoffs.
There is a lot of young talent on the current roster between Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Gary Harris and others. It will be up to the coaching staff to get the most out of this group and help them reach the next level.
Every product here is independently selected by Mashable journalists. If you buy something featured, we may earn an affiliate commission which helps support our work.
A mind-blowing coin with a nifty hidden mechanic is wowing the internet.
The object in question was made by Roman Booteen, an Instagram artist who creates intricate carvings on Zippo lighters and coins. Not only are the designs gorgeous to look at, some of them also have some sort of hidden feature or compartment.
One rad coin that Booteen posted on his Instagram got a ton of attention for its really cool contraption. On the back of the silver dollar is a carving of a knight and woman looking at a indentation on a wall.
The knight’s sword is actually removable, and it works as a key to unlock what’s behind the indentation. By inserting it into a little notch on the edge of the coin, the indent opens up, and a grail is revealed.
Booteen’s other creations also make use of a similar kind of mechanic. This includes a beetle engraving that opens up its shell, and a statue that’s surrounded by spears.
Instead of a lock-and-key device, these coins have a little switch that can be pressed near the rim of the object. Just like the knight coin, another portion of the coin opens up after activating the switch.
In addition to the coins, Booteen’s lighter designs are also pretty cool. While they don’t have a hidden switch you can mess around with, they’re all very aesthetically pleasing to look at.
A lot of these designs are also based off films like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Alien. The carvings are super detailed, and the characters look exactly like they do the movie.
Booteen’s coins will sometimes pop up on eBay auctions where they’ll sell for a ton of money. Just last year, a coin that “bites” your finger sold for over $10,000.
At the moment, Booteen doesn’t appear to have any coins for sale on eBay.
Twitter has brought the foreign election-interfering trolls out from under their bridges.
On Wednesday, Twitter announced in a blog post that it was releasing the complete cache of data and content by foreign entities including Russia and Iran created to interfere with American politics and information. The amount of content is staggering: 4,611 accounts from foreign bad actors published over 10 million tweets to manipulate American discourse since 2009.
Twitter is publishing the data in compliance with promises it made to the US government, and to enable independent research of the information campaigns.
“It is clear that information operations and coordinated inauthentic behavior will not cease,” Twitter wrote. “We will continue to proactively combat nefarious attempts to undermine the integrity of Twitter, while partnering with civil society, government, our industry peers, and researchers to improve our collective understanding of coordinated attempts to interfere in the public conversation.”
The majority of the accounts and content comes from Russia’s Internet Research Agency. But about one sixth comes from state-backed efforts by Iran, a campaign to which Twitter and Facebook alerted the public in August.
The examples of the content it published look familiar: memes supporting Trump and debasing Hillary Clinton, alongside Tweets expressing outrage against police violence in black communities. It’s another reminder of how foreign actors weaponized both general hate and vitriol, as well as legitimate issues affecting the American public.
Anyone can download the data here. But you might want to have an external hard drive around; the Tweets from the IRA comprise 296 GB, while the Iran media is 65.7 GB. The archives contain “10 million Tweets and more than 2 million images, GIFs, videos, and Periscope broadcasts, including the earliest on-Twitter activity from accounts connected with these campaigns, dating back to 2009.”
Twitter gave a group of researchers early access to the data. But it hopes that making the information more widely available will help in understanding and combatting these efforts.
In May, Congress published a similar data dump of promoted Facebook ads created by Russians to sow discord. It was about the same size, in GB, as the Tweets; but that was just the promoted content on Facebook. Twitter’s cache includes non-promoted content.
The data is part of Twitter’s larger “Elections integrity” campaign. With just a few weeks to go until the American midterms, we hope it’s working.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that Washington may lift sanctions imposed on Turkey during the dispute over its detention of a US pastor.
Pompeo’s remarks came on Wednesday after his talks with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on an unscheduled trip linked to the probe into the disappearance and alleged killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“We’ll have a decision on that shortly but some of the sanctions that were put in place were directly connected to Pastor Brunson and there’s a logic to now removing those as well,” Pompeo told reporters as his plane refuelled in Brussels, Belgium.
In Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who also met Pompeo on Wednesday, did not address the issue of the Brunson-related sanctions directly, but declared that any such US measures were “nonsense”.
“We agree that in our relations, there should be no sanctions like this and other issues,” he said. “As long as there are sanctions, relations can go nowhere.”
Frayed ties
US President Donald Trump‘s administration imposed sanctions targeting Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu in response to Turkey’s arrest and prosecution of US pastor Andrew Brunson on terror charges.
In all, Brunson was held for two years and was convicted and sentenced earlier this month of espionage and aiding terror groups, only to be quickly released on the basis of good behaviour and time served.
Cavusoglu (C) met Pompeo (R) in Ankara on Wednesday [Cem Ozdel/Anadolu]
Trump hailed the release, which has been seen as a opening for Ankara and Washington to restore frayed ties.
Lira crisis
The introduction of the sanctions in August prompted a currency crisis in Turkey. Turkish lira has fallen about 35 percent this year, but there are some signs of recovery.
Brunson’s release has helped push the lira to its firmest in two months. And after Pompeo’s remarks on Wednesday, the currency stood at 5.55 against the US dollar, a gain in value of more than two percent.
Also on Wednesday, the lawyer for Brunson said he had appealed to a Turkish court against his client’s sentence.
The verdict was appealed because it “contravened the law and procedures”, a copy of the application seen by Reuters showed.
The prosecutor in the case also challenged the verdict, citing the same reason, a copy of that application showed.
Both documents showed that detailed appeals will be prepared once they receive the court verdict in writing.
Pressed Wednesday on why he might believe Riyadh’s future findings, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declined to acknowledge the possibility that Jamal Khashoggi was killed, describing him instead as “missing.” | Leah Millis/AFP/Getty Images
The secretary of state’s amiable tone toward the Saudis in public following the suspected murder of a journalist has drawn criticism.
Just this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo published an essay arguing that one major reason President Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision will succeed is its “moral clarity.”
But then there he was: The same Mike Pompeo, in the same week, smiling and chatting amiably with Saudi leaders suspected of orchestrating the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Pompeo expressed confidence that the Saudis will conduct a legitimate probe into the case and hold wrongdoers accountable — a stance many in Washington found hard to believe.
Story Continued Below
Pompeo’s performance can be chalked up to any number of factors, including the inevitable trade-offs most U.S. administrations find they must make in dealing with unsavory allies who happen to be key to American interests. But it was also an example of Pompeo — no stranger to hawkish talk — toeing the Trump line, even if it risks tarnishing his image.
The approach, particularly Pompeo’s friendly tone toward the Saudis in public, has drawn criticism from the foreign policy establishment, Democrats and newspaper editorial boards, with some warning he could be complicit in a Saudi cover-up.
“Would a little more solemnity have harmed his mission?” asked Jon Alterman, a Middle East analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It might have helped it.”
Added a Democratic congressional aide: “That grip and grin will come back to haunt him.”
Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident who was living in the U.S. and writing for The Washington Post, is alleged to have been killed and dismembered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain marriage-related documents.
Turkish officials have alleged a 15-member Saudi hit squad targeted him, possibly for criticizing the powerful Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Turkish media on Wednesday published details from audio recordings that indicated the Saudi hit team severed Khashoggi’s fingers while interrogating him, then later beheaded and cut up his body.
The crown prince and Saudi King Salman have denied any knowledge of what happened. But while at first the Saudi government insisted Khashoggi had left the consulate safely, more recently they’ve been floating another theory: that Saudis sent to either interrogate or abduct Khashoggi went too far.
The case, and Saudi officials’ shifting narratives about it, has angered Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, who already were unhappy with a range of Saudi actions, including their killing of civilians in the war in Yemen. U.S. lobbyists and business leaders have also been abandoning their Saudi ties in the wake of the Khashoggi incident.
Trump and his aides have been more cautious in their response, keeping in mind that Riyadh is a major part of their plans to weaken the regime in Iran while keeping oil markets stable. Trump has also balked at halting U.S. arms sales to the Saudis, saying it would hurt U.S. jobs.
From the start, Pompeo and the State Department have been occasionally hesitant to discuss the case. Pompeo issued his first statement about the journalist almost a week after Khashoggi vanished. The statement noted that were “conflicting reports” about what may have happened.
Since then, Pompeo and the department have largely stuck to the line that the U.S. doesn’t know much about what happened and called for more facts to come out before making a judgement on the incident.
By State Department standrds, observers say the U.S. tone has been mild for what is a growing diplomatic crisis. For instance, while the department keeps saying it is “concerned” about Khashoggi’s fate, it has not raised the verbal heat as it traditionally would by saying it is “deeply concerned.”
The State Department’s readouts of Pompeo’s meetings in Saudi Arabia and Turkey this week also don’t focus strictly on Khashoggi — whose killing was presumably the reason Trump dispatched his chief diplomat to the region. Instead, the readouts describe the discussions as covering a range of bilateral issues, including Syria. In at least one case, Khashoggi is the last topic listed.
And while a number of U.S. lawmakers, as well as Khashoggi’s family, have called for an independent investigation, Pompeo seems content to let the Saudis do their own probe, even thanking the Saudi king for his commitment to a “transparent” investigation.
The Washington Post wrote a blistering editorial about Pompeo’s friendly demeanor alongside the Saudi crown prince, saying Pompeo “appeared less intent on determining the truth than in helping the de facto Saudi ruler escape from the crisis he triggered.”
Pressed Wednesday on why he might believe Riyadh’s future findings, Pompeo declined to acknowledge the possibility that Khashoggi was killed, describing him instead as “missing.” The secretary of state also stressed the many interests the United States has in Saudi Arabia.
“I do think it’s important that everyone keep in their mind that we have lots of important relationships — financial relationships between U.S. and Saudi companies, governmental relationships, things we work on together all across the world — efforts to reduce the risk to the United States of America from the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, Iran,” Pompeo told reporters. “The Saudis have been great partners in working alongside us on those issues.”
Pompeo denied he was giving Saudi Arabia the benefit of the doubt on its promised investigation.
“It’s reasonable to give them a handful of days more to complete it so they get it right, so that it’s thorough and complete,” he said. “That’s what they’ve indicated they need and I’m hopeful they — and then we’ll get to see it. We’ll evaluate this on a factual, straight-up basis.”
Since joining the Trump administration, Pompeo has often downplayed or denying any potential differences between him and the president. He’s supported Trump on just about every front, standing by the president, for instance, when he claimed that North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat to the United States despite Pyongyang taking what experts say are few, if any, tangible steps towards denuclearization.
Trump this week went further than Pompeo in trumpeting Saudi leaders’ talking points on Khashoggi, repeatedly pointing out that the crown prince and king denied any knowledge of what happened. The president even likened the case to the sexual assault accusations against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court.
“Here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent,” Trump told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday night. “I don’t like that.”
Pompeo’s approach to the Khashoggi incident may be another example of the secretary of state choosing to stay in lock-step with the president.
It could also be part of the administration’s desire to stay the course on Iran.
Pompeo has long been a hawk on Iran. While serving in the House, Pompeo repeatedly slammed the Obama administration for agreeing to a nuclear deal with Iran — a deal Trump quit — casting the former president as naive for believing Iran would curb its nuclear program.
Since joining the Trump team, Pompeo has made weakening the Iranian regime a top goal — one that could shape his legacy at Foggy Bottom.
In the essay in Foreign Affairs posted this week, Pompeo lays out the administration’s strategy against Iran, calling for a maximum pressure campaign of sanctions and public exposure of the Iranian leadership’s brutality and corruption. Pompeo wrote that Trump’s approach to Iran involves a “moral confrontation” that he likens to how Ronald Reagan approached the Soviet Union.
Pompeo’s decision last month to certify to Congress that the U.S. should keep supporting the Saudis in Yemen, despite allegations they are committing war crimes, was believed to hinge in part on maintaining Saudi cooperation on Iran.
While the Saudis have their own rivalry with Iran, making it unlikely a rupture with the U.S. would lead Riyadh to embrace Tehran, Pompeo is working to ensure that the Saudis will fill any gaps in the energy market after Nov. 4, when a series of punishing U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports take effect.
While there may be discomfort on the right about the forgiving tone Trump and Pompeo are taking with Saudi Arabia, there have been no calls to completely break off ties with the strategically important country.
Asked on Wednesday to discuss Pompeo’s performance in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Republican lawmakers largely sidestepped the question.
“We have a tremendous relationship with the Saudis. They’re important to us, we’re important to them but we have to be honest and watch these things closely,” said Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.
The U.S. has to think about its long-term interests, said GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana.
“You’re a dream weaver if you think we can keep a lid on the Mideast by turning to all of the countries there and saying, ‘You’re all a bunch of authoritarian despots and we’re not going to talk to you anymore,’” Kennedy said. “You do that and you’re going to create a vacuum. And I can tell you [is] who’s coming in: Russia, and China and a lot of other countries.”
Burgess Everett and Elana Schor contributed to this report.
One of the biggest hip-hop stories of 2018 remains the revelation that Drake apparently had a son in secret. Pusha T first dug up the dirt and aired it out on his vicious dis track “The Story of Adidon” back in May, rapping, “We talkin’ character, let me keep with the facts / You are hiding a child, let that boy come home / Deadbeat mothafucka playin’ border patrol, ooh / Adonis is your son and he deserves more than an Adidas press run, that’s real.”
Drake seemed to confirm the allegations on his album Scorpion the following month, stating on the melancholy “Emotionless” that, “I wasn’t hidin’ my kid from the world / I was hidin’ the world from my kid.” But one of the lingering questions from this entire saga remains where exactly Pusha got his intel from. Signs potentially pointed to Kanye, who produced Pusha’s DAYTONA album earlier this year (and who’s long been engaged in a cold war of sorts with Drake), but ‘Ye denied it in a tweetstorm in September.
Pusha himself appeared on Joe Budden’s podcast on Wednesday (October 17) to lay the matter to rest, admitting that his information came from Noah “40” Shebib, Drake’s trusted collaborator and co-founder of OVO Sound.
“The information came from 40. It didn’t come from Kanye at all,” Pusha said. “40 is sleeping with a woman, he talks to her daily five or six hours a day, provides opportunity for… and ultimately speaks about how he’s disgruntled about certain things. Notoriety and things involving Drake and his career, so on and so forth. With that also came the fact that Drake has a child. With that also came the trip that everybody took to go see the child and bring him gifts and all this information. She divulged this information. That’s where it came from.”
Pusha’s claim comes after Drake’s recent admission that he’d recorded a dis track aimed at Pusha after “The Story of Adidon” but left it on the cutting-room floor. Of course, there’s enough to delve into on “Duppy Freestyle,” the shot Drake fired after Pusha’s initial dis, “Infrared,” that ignited this entire beef.
Interestingly, on “Adidon,” Pusha also directs some of his ire at 40 himself, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. “OVO 40, hunched over like he 80, tick, tick, tick / How much time he got? That man is sick, sick, sick,” he raps.
You can hear the whole conversation in context, and much more, by listening to the entire episode below. And if you need a refresher, listen to “The Story of Adidon” above — then maybe go for a walk outside.
Actor Ross Butler has played roles in 13 Reasons Why and Riverdale, some of the most twist-ridden shows on TV. Now, a lawsuit from Francis Bean Cobain’s ex-husband Isaiah Silva names him as part of a conspiracy to commit murder for the sake of recovering one of Kurt Cobain’s heirloom guitars.
According to Spin, Butler has denied all allegations in the suit. Reps for the actor did not immediately respond to Mashable’s request for comment.
Butler in one of many named alleged accomplices in what Silva claims was a plot to illegally enter his house, kill him, and obtain the acoustic guitar Kurt Cobain played in a 1993 performance of MTV’s Unplugged.
The guitar in question has been an object of contention between Silva, who fronts the band The Eeries, and Francis Bean Cobain since their divorce in 2017. Silva considered the guitar a wedding present and intended to keep it after the couple’s split, but Cobain (the younger) insisted she never gave the custom guitar to her then-husband and considers it a family heirloom.
Also named in the suit are Courtney Love and Sam Lufti, the former of which was also accused of kidnapping by Silva in June 2016.
While Butler denies all allegations of breaking and entering as well as conspiracy to commit murder, he did state that he was present at Silva’s house on the night in question, per Spin.
According to Butler, Silva allowed him inside while someone else called the police — after speaking to the police Butler left the scene while Lufti remained behind with Silva.
Blackout is a brand new mode for the storied Call of Duty series, which is inspired by the wildly popular shooter subgenre of battle royale games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale. I do not like those games. But I do like Blackout a whole lot.
These three very popular games/modes all have the same basic premise: A bunch of people drop down onto a map with absolutely nothing, and need to gather supplies and weapons to survive until the end. Meanwhile, the available space to play in slowly shrinks, bringing players closer and closer to each other until there’s one person or team left.
If you die, you’re out.
Blackout takes battle royale and perfects it.
Image: Activision
This battle royale subgenre is relatively simple on paper but in order for it to be successful, it needs to be pretty airtight. Like with any other competitive shooter game where speed and movement is everything, anything that impedes that can be super frustrating.
To me, PUBG and Fortnite are super frustrating.
PUBG, which was the first battle royale game to really shoot the subgenre into extreme popularity while it was still in beta, is full of holes. It’s getting better and better with each update, but in my couple of instances playing the game, the bugs, lack of optimization, and general unfinished feel of the game kept me from getting sucked in.
When Fortnite dipped its toes into battle royale it felt like a more finished product. Probably because it was actually finished. But it added an extra element to shake things up: building.
To me, this building element was too much. It was an obstacle that I just really didn’t feel like engaging in because it complicated what could have been a rather straightforward multiplayer game. Some people like it, obviously, but it’s not my cup of tea.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s Blackout mode takes battle royale and perfects it.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 takes the finished feel of Fortnite and the barebones elements of PUBG and delivers a really fun and well-designed mode in Blackout.
Sure, I’m not very good at it, but I finally get that “just one more game” feeling that other people have with games like PUBG and Fortnite.
The movement, vaulting, and combat has that reliable Call of Duty polish. The servers are great. The inventory management is easier to grasp for newcomers. The visuals are much better than the competition’s. The weapons and items have a very nice feel to them.
It’s very pretty.
Image: activision
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s Blackout mode takes battle royale and perfects it.
The unique selling point of Blackout, the inclusion of zombies, makes it just unique enough to not be a boring copy. There are certain parts of the map that include the option to get special weapons, but it also unleashes a horde of zombies on you and everyone near you.
It’s honestly hard for me to play anything other than Blackout right now.
NFL owners and executives have reportedly discussed the Chargers‘ long-term viability in Los Angeles at this week’s league meetings.
According to Seth Wickersham of ESPN The Magazine, it has been a “struggle” for the Chargers to sell personal seat licenses for Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, California.
Wickersham added the Chargers are likely to revise their revenue goals from $400 million to $150 million as a result.
The Chargers played their inaugural season in Los Angeles in 1960 before moving to San Diego and staying there for the next 55 years.
Following the 2016 season, the Chargers relocated back to L.A.
Since the move, the Bolts have played their home games at the StubHub Center in Carson, California, which holds only 27,000 people.
The Chargers will be co-tenants with the Los Angeles Rams in Inglewood beginning in 2020.
Unlike the Rams, the Chargers seemingly haven’t been welcomed back to the Los Angeles market with open arms. Several factors are likely at play, including the fact that the Rams have a more storied history in L.A., as they played there from 1946 until 1994 when they moved to St. Louis. The franchise moved back to the city in 2006.
The Rams currently play their home games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
So far this season, the Chargers are last in the NFL in average attendance at 25,370 due, in large part, to their small venue.
Meanwhile, the Rams are 14th at 69,163.
The Rams won the NFC West last season and are the only remaining undefeated team in the NFL this season at 6-0.
The Chargers are also in the playoff hunt at 4-2, but there is little doubt that the Rams are viewed as the top team in Los Angeles, which may be part of the reason for the Bolts’ seat-selling struggles.
Daily Trends Hunter 