YouTube TV just won its first Technical Emmy award for its "Views" suite of features, which lets users access sports highlights, key plays, player stats and game scores. TechCrunch reports: At the 74th annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards last night, YouTube TV was declared the winner for the category "AI-ML Curation of Sports Highlights." The tech company also announced today that Key Plays reached a notable milestone -- the feature was used in over 10 million watch sessions on the platform. Last year, viewers used key plays the most during the World Cup, regular season NFL games and Premier League matches.

The Key Plays view tracks important plays in a game. Users can tap on the plays to rewatch when it occurs in the game. This is helpful for users that missed a live game and want to catch up on key moments. When YouTube TV launched Views in 2018, it was only available for baseball, basketball, football and hockey. Soccer and golf were added later on. The suite of features was also initially limited to phones and tablets. Today, the feature is available within the YouTube TV app across smart TVs and mobile devices.

In addition to Stats, Key Plays and Scores View, there's also Fantasy Football View, which is a mobile-only feature and lets users link their existing fantasy football account. That way, when a user is watching NFL games on YouTube TV, the feature allows them to see how their team is performing in real time. Plus, there's a "Jump to" function for users to quickly access a segment they want to view, which is especially handy for tennis fans and for users watching the Olympics. "Views came out of a team brainstorm about five years ago and launched about a year after YouTube TV," said Kathryn Cochrane, YouTube TV's group project manager, in a company blog post. "A lot of our viewers are devoted sports fans, and we found that when they watch sports, they aren't just looking at what's on the big screen. They were also actively on their phones, finding more details such as stats for their fantasy football league, updates from other games, and more, all to enhance what they were already watching."

A paper describing MineDojo, Nvidia's generalist AI agent that can perform actions from written prompts in Minecraft, won an Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Paper Award at the 2022 NeurIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) conference, Nvidia revealed on Monday. Ars Technica reports: To train the MineDojo framework to play Minecraft, researchers fed it 730,000 Minecraft YouTube videos (with more than 2.2 billion words transcribed), 7,000 scraped webpages from the Minecraft wiki, and 340,000 Reddit posts and 6.6 million Reddit comments describing Minecraft gameplay. From this data, the researchers created a custom transformer model called MineCLIP that associates video clips with specific in-game Minecraft activities. As a result, someone can tell a MineDojo agent what to do in the game using high-level natural language, such as "find a desert pyramid" or "build a nether portal and enter it," and MineDojo will execute the series of steps necessary to make it happen in the game.

MineDojo aims to create a flexible agent that can generalize learned actions and apply them to different behaviors in the game. As Nvidia writes, "While researchers have long trained autonomous AI agents in video-game environments such as StarCraft, Dota, and Go, these agents are usually specialists in only a few tasks. So Nvidia researchers turned to Minecraft, the world's most popular game, to develop a scalable training framework for a generalist agent "one that can successfully execute a wide variety of open-ended tasks." The award-winning paper debuted in June.

You can see examples of MineDojo in action on its official website, and the code for MineDojo and MineCLIP is available on GitHub.

Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple, has been awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden, the White House announced Friday. The Verge reports: The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest US honor that can be given to a civilian, and it's presented to "individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," the White House said in a statement. Jobs founded Apple in April 1976, and it's since become one of the biggest companies in the world. He helped launch many tech products that have gone on to become cultural touchstones, including the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. He died on October 5th, 2011.

In its statement, the White House praised Jobs's creative approach to his various endeavors. "Steve Jobs was the co-founder, chief executive, and chair of Apple, Inc., CEO of Pixar and held a leading role at the Walt Disney Company," the White House wrote. "His vision, imagination and creativity led to inventions that have, and continue to, change the way the world communicates, as well as transforming the computer, music, film and wireless industries." The award will be presented on July 7th. The full list of this year's Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients can be viewed here.

The winner of this year's MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is commercializing a new water desalination technology. MIT News reports: Nona Desalination says it has developed a device capable of producing enough drinking water for 10 people at half the cost and with 1/10th the power of other water desalination devices. The device is roughly the size and weight of a case of bottled water and is powered by a small solar panel. The traditional approach for water desalination relies on a power-intensive process called reverse osmosis. In contrast, Nona uses a technology developed in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics that removes salt and bacteria from seawater using an electrical current.

"Because we can do all this at super low pressure, we don't need the high-pressure pump [used in reverse osmosis], so we don't need a lot of electricity," says Crawford, who co-founded the company with MIT Research Scientist Junghyo Yoon. "Our device runs on less power than a cell phone charger." The company has already developed a small prototype that produces clean drinking water. With its winnings, Nona will build more prototypes to give to early customers. The company plans to sell its first units to sailors before moving into the emergency preparedness space in the U.S., which it estimates to be a $5 billion industry. From there, it hopes to scale globally to help with disaster relief. The technology could also possibly be used for hydrogen production, oil and gas separation, and more.

After previously canceling its in-person E3 2022 event, the ESA has now informed its partners that there will be no digital event equivalent this year either - meaning E3 2022 has fully been canceled. IGN reports: The news broke via a tweet from Razer PR lead Will Powers, who said that an email had been sent out announcing the cancellation of a digital E3 event. IGN has independently verified the contents of the email as well. The ESA had initially planned for an in-person E3 event this year after having no event in 2020 due to COVID-19 and a digital one in 2021. "We will devote all our energy and resources to delivering a revitalized physical and digital E3 experience next summer," said the Entertainment Software Association in an official statement to IGN. "Whether enjoyed from the show floor or your favorite devices, the 2023 showcase will bring the community, media, and industry back together in an all-new format and interactive experience."

"We look forward to presenting E3 to fans around the world live from Los Angeles in 2023."

New submitter sperm shares a report from the BBC: The Beijing Winter Olympics app that all Games attendees must use contains security weaknesses that leave users exposed to data breaches, analysts say. The My2022 app will be used by athletes, audience members and media for daily Covid monitoring. The app will also offer voice chats, file transfers and Olympic news.

But cybersecurity group Citizen Lab says the app fails to provide encryption on many of its files. China has dismissed the concerns. Questions about the app come amid a rise in warnings about visitors' tech security ahead of the Games, which begin on 4 February. People attending the Beijing Olympics should bring burner phones and create email accounts for their time in China, cyber security firm Internet 2.0 said on Tuesday. Several countries have also reportedly told athletes to leave their main devices at home. The report also says that it's found a "censorship keywords" list built into the app, and a feature that allows people to flag other "politically sensitive" expressions.

Last night, Netflix's "The Power of the Dog" became the streamer's first-ever movie to take home a Golden Globe for best motion picture (drama). The movie also won for best director (Jane Campion) and best supporting actor (Kodi Smit-McPhee). As TechCrunch points out, "NBC announced in May 2021 it wouldn't broadcast the awards show this year after an investigation by The L.A. Times revealed the lack of diversity within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the organization that hosts the annual event, as well as evidence of some members receiving gifts that amounted to bribes. [...] Instead, the event's winners were live-tweeted in an often bizarre fashion." From the report: In addition to being an overall quieter year as the HFPA tries to reform its organization following the controversies, the winning networks also aren't touting their victories as they would normally, despite some seeing some notable firsts and upsets. In prior years, HBO would be happily promoting its sweep over rivals. The network led the night with six wins, including four for HBO and two for HBO Max. Several of these were for its TV series "Succession," which won for best TV drama, TV drama actor (Jeremy Strong) and supporting actress (Sarah Snook.) HBO Max's comedy "Hacks" also notably beat out Emmy winner "Ted Lasso" (Apple TV+) as best comedy, and saw its lead, Jean Smart, win for best actress in a comedy. And Kate Winslet won best TV actress in a limited series for HBO's "Mare of Easttown."

Meanwhile, though Netflix led the year by nominations -- including for best dramatic film "The Power of the Dog" and drama series "Squid Game" -- it had said it wouldn't participate in the event until the HFPA institutes changes. That decision means it's also now not bragging about a couple of notable firsts that resulted from last night's awards. [...] In addition, Netflix's runaway hit TV series "Squid Game" received three nominations this year, leading to the first-ever win for South Korea, as South Korean actor O Yeong-su won for his role in the series, beating out "Succession's" Kieran Culkin (HBO) and "The Morning Show's" Billy Crudup (Apple TV+). Netflix also won for "tick, tick... BOOM!" when Andrew Garfield took the trophy for best actor in a motion picture (musical or comedy), though the tweet had forgotten to credit the project by name.

Apple TV+ took home one win last night, as "Ted Lasso's" Jason Sudeikis won best actor in a TV series (comedy). Hulu also got one Globe, as "Dopesick's" Michael Keaton won best actor in a TV limited series or motion picture made for television, while Amazon Prime Video's "The Underground Railroad" won the category. Amazon Prime Video's "Being the Ricardos" was highlighted with Nicole Kidman's win as best actress in a motion picture. In another milestone, the first trans actress to win a Golden Globe, FX's "Pose" star Michaela Jae Rodriguez, took home the trophy for best actress in a drama. 20th Century Studio/Disney's "West Side Story" won best picture (musical or comedy) and its stars, Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose, won best actress and supporting actress, respectively. Disney's "Encanto," which streamed on Disney+ just a month after hitting theaters, won best animated picture. Warner Bros.' "Dune" got the trophy for best score (Hans Zimmer), and Will Smith was named best actor in a motion picture (drama) for "King Richard." The best non-English language picture award went to the Japanese film "Drive My Car." You can view the full list of winners here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The Lucid Air, the first model from California-based electric car start-up company Lucid Motors, has been named MotorTrend's 2022 Car of the Year. It's the first time any automaker has won the award with its first car. MotorTrend's panel of judges lauded the Lucid Air for its extraordinary range and efficiency -- some versions can go up to 520 miles on a single charge -- as well as its performance and luxurious interior. In its announcement, MotorTrend called the Air "the new [electric vehicle] benchmark." While the judges generally liked the Air's interior design, they did criticize what they saw as an over-reliance on touch screens for many basic controls. The judges praised the car's Lucid-designed stereo-system.

It's not the first time a start-up automaker has won the award. The Tesla Model S won it in 2012. But the Model S was Tesla's second car, after the Tesla Roadster. The Air is Lucid's first car, and it only recently went into production. Despite its high cost, MotorTrend's judges thought the Lucid Air represented a strong value. They tested the Grand Touring version with a starting price around $140,000. Less expensive versions, with prices starting around $77,000, will be available later, but they won't have the driving range and power of the pricier cars. Lucid's CEO, Peter Rawlinson, once worked at Tesla and helped engineer the Model S. In creating the Lucid Air, he has said, efficiency has been a primary focus. The Lucid is actually the most energy efficient electric car sold in America, according to EPA estimates.

Elon Musk on Thursday took to Twitter to promise a $100 million prize for development of the "best" technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions. He said more details would be coming "next week." Reuters reports: Capturing planet-warming emissions is becoming a critical part of many plans to keep climate change in check, but very little progress has been made on the technology to date, with efforts focused on cutting emissions rather than taking carbon out of the air. The International Energy Agency said late last year that a sharp rise in the deployment of carbon capture technology was needed if countries are to meet net-zero emissions targets.

Newly-sworn-in U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to accelerate the development of carbon capture technology as part of his sweeping plan to tackle climate change. On Thursday, he named Jennifer Wilcox, an expert in carbon removal technologies, as the principal deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy at the U.S. Department of Energy.

SpamSlapper shares a report from The Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A company commercializing a CSIRO-developed, seaweed feed product, which slashes the amount of greenhouse gases cattle burp and fart into the atmosphere, has won a $1 million international prize for its work reshaping the food system. CSIRO-affiliated company Future Feed said it would use its Food Planet Prize winnings to create an international commercial fund to help First Nations communities generate income from cultivating and selling the seaweed.

Methane emissions from livestock make up around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and one cow produces on average as much gas emission as one car. "As a greenhouse gas, methane is about 28 times more potent in terms of global warming potential than carbon dioxide and lasts much longer in the atmosphere," the CSIRO said on its website. Future Feed director and CSIRO scientist Michael Battaglia said that when added to cattle feed, the product, which contains Australian "super seaweed" Asparagopsis, virtually eliminated methane from the animals' bodily emissions. "We know that just a handful [of the product] per animal per day, or 0.2 percent of their diet can virtually eliminate 99.9 percent of methane," Dr Battaglia said.

Raisey-raison writes from a report via The New York Times: The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists for their work on black holes, regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing -- no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light -- can escape. They are Roger Penrose, an Englishman, Reinhard Genzel, a German, and Andrea Ghez, an American. Dr. Penrose proved that "black holes will form whenever the conditions are right," said Brown University physicist Sylvester Gates, incoming president of the American Physical Society. "It is almost an unstoppable process. That really was an astounding result."

The New York Times adds: "Working independently, Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez, and their teams, have spent the last decades tracking stars and dust clouds whizzing around the center of our galaxy with telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, trying to see if that dark dusty realm does indeed harbor a black hole." For what it's worth, Dr. Penrose was awarded half of the approximately $1.1 million prize and the second half was split between Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez. "Dr. Ghez is only the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, following Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018," the report notes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The medal awarded on Friday lauded the "lifesaving bravery and devotion to duty" for work detecting land mines in Cambodia. Its recipient: a rat named Magawa. Magawais the first rat to receive the award -- a gold medal bestowed by the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, a British charity, that is often called the "animal's George Cross" after an honor usually given to civilians that recognizes acts of bravery and heroism. Not since the fictional Remy of the 2007 Disney-Pixar film "Ratatouille" has a rat done so much to challenge the public's view of the animals as creatures more commonly seen scuttling through sewers and the subway: Magawa has discovered 39 land mines and 28 pieces of unexploded ordnance, and helped clear more than 1.5 million square feet of land over the past four years.

More than five million land mines are thought to have been laid in Cambodia during the ousting of the Khmer Rouge and internal conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s. Parts of the country are also littered with unexploded ordnance dropped in United States airstrikes during the Vietnam War, a 2019 report from the Congressional Research Service found. Since 1979, more than 64,000 people have been injured by land mines and other explosives in Cambodia, and more than 25,000 amputees have been recorded there, according to the HALO Trust, the world's largest humanitarian land mine clearance charity.

Magawa, the most successful rat to have taken part in the program, was trained to detect TNT, the chemical compound within explosives. The ability to sniff out TNT makes him much faster than any person in searching for land mines, as he can ignore scrap metal that would usually be picked up by a metal detector. He can search an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes, whereas a person with a metal detector would usually take four days to search an area of that size. When he finds a mine, he signals to his handler by scratching at the earth above it. Unlike humans, Magawa is too light to detonate a mine, so there is minimal risk of injury.

Netflix led the Emmy Awards race with a record-breaking 160 primetime nominations, beating the likes of linear television giant HBO and digital newcomers Disney+ and Apple TV+. Deutsche Welle reports: HBO came in second with 107 Emmy nominations, with its hit series "Watchmen" sweeping up 26 nominations, including a nod for the best limited series category. Earlier this year, Netflix hit all-time highs in viewership with industry observers pointing to lockdown measures that kept people in their homes for longer periods. Other digital streaming services have tried to make inroads during the pandemic, such as Disney+ and Apple TV+, which picked up its first nomination with Jennifer Aniston's best drama actress bid for "The Morning Show." Meanwhile, Amazon Prime, likely one of Netflix's biggest competitors, saw its comedy "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" pick up 20 nominations.

"Despite the unprecedented challenges facing the entertainment industry, it has been an extraordinary year for television," said Television Academy Chairman and chief executive Frank Scherma. "We are honored to be recognizing so many of the talented programs, producers, directors and craftspeople behind the remarkable storytelling that has brought us together while we remain apart." In some senses, next year's TV and cinema awards could be far worse hit than 2020's -- given that most of the series currently vying for gongs were produced long before the pandemic picked up pace.

kbahey shares a report from Planet Princeton: Renowned mathematician and Princeton University professor John Horton Conway died April 11 as a result of complications from the coronavirus. He was 82. Conway made contributions to many areas of mathematics, including game theory, but was most well known for the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life. The Guardian once called Conway the world's most charismatic mathematician. "John Horton Conway is a cross between Archimedes, Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali. For many years, he worried that his obsession with playing silly games was ruining his career -- until he realized that it could lead to extraordinary discoveries," wrote journalist Siobhan Roberts in a 2015 profile.

Longtime Slashdot reader SpaceGhost writes: Per Engadget, Ms. Eilish and her older brother (Finneas O'Connell) produced her massively popular album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? with minimal studio gear out of a bedroom studio in their parents' house. They used equipment that many aspiring artists could afford (about $1,000 worth of Yamaha monitors for instance, and at first a $100 microphone.) The 18-year-old singer swept all four of the night's biggest prizes -- Best New Artist, Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Album of the Year -- along with honors for Best Pop Vocal Album.

According to a Pro Sound Network interview with O'Connell, their production setup included a pair of $200 Yamaha HS5 nearfield monitors with a $450 H8S subwoofer, a Universal Audio Apollo 8 interface and Apple's Logic Pro X. The duo reportedly used to record with a $99 Audio Technica AT2020 mic. "The stems (that is, individual layers of instruments and music) were then sent to mix engineer Rob Kinelski to compile," adds Engadget.

At the 2019 Game Awards today, Microsoft revealed the name and console design of its next-generation gaming console: Xbox Series X. The Verge reports: The console itself looks far more like a PC than we've seen from previous Xbox consoles, and Microsoft's trailer provides a brief glimpse at the new design. The console itself is designed to be used in both vertical and horizontal orientations, and Microsoft's Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, promises that it will "deliver four times the processing power of Xbox One X in the most quiet and efficient way."

The Xbox Series X will include a custom-designed CPU based on AMD's Zen 2 and Radeon RDNA architecture. Microsoft is also using an SSD on Xbox Series X, which promises to boost load times. Xbox Series X will also support 8K gaming, frame rates of up to 120 fps in games, ray tracing, and variable refresh rate support. Microsoft also revealed a new Xbox Wireless Controller today. "Its size and shape have been refined to accommodate an even wider range of people, and it also features a new Share button to make capturing screenshots and game clips simple," explains Spencer. This updated controller will work with existing Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs, and will ship with every Xbox Series X.

Alaina Gassler, a 14-year-old inventor from West Grove, Pennsylvania, came up with a clever way to eliminate the blind spot created by the thick pillars on the side of a car's windshield. All it requires is some relatively inexpensive and readily available tech available at an electronics store. Gizmodo reports: Her solution involves installing an outward-facing webcam on the outside of a vehicle's windshield pillar, and then projecting a live feed from that camera onto the inside of that pillar. Custom 3D-printed parts allowed her to perfectly align the projected image so that it seamlessly blends with what a driver sees through the passenger window and the windshield, essentially making the pillar invisible.

Gassler's invention isn't quite ready to be installed in vehicles across the country just yet, but the technologies already exist that would allow it to be implemented in cars without serving as a distraction to the driver. Short-throw projectors could be installed at the base of the passenger side windshield pillar to create the image without having to worry about the passenger blocking the beam. And many cars have already replaced side mirrors with cameras, or include nearly invisible cameras in the rear for safely backing up, so adding one more on the side of the pillar would presumably be trivial. Gassler won the top prize for her invention at this year's Society for Science and the Public's Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering for Rising Stars) science and engineering competition.

theodp writes: It's not just Hollywood that's running out of new story ideas. Fueled by a $1.1 million NSF award, PBS stalwart Roadtrip Nation is casting Computer Science Roadtrip (apply by June 14, kids!), which will send three young adults interested in computer science on a road trip across the country in a green RV to meet inspiring professionals working with cutting-edge technology. "This trip is about highlighting exciting careers connected to computer science and innovation," explains Roadtrip Nation, which just a few years back partnered with Microsoft on The Code Trip Roadtrip, which also sent three young people on a road trip across the country in a green RV to interview inspiring professionals (including Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes) and "inform others of the many career routes one can take with a computer science background."

Lockheed Martin's X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology aircraft is officially in "the manufacturing phase," bringing the company "one step closer to enabling supersonic travel for passengers around the world." The experimental jet was awarded a contract from NASA earlier this year as it is capable of flying at supersonic speeds without creating loud supersonic booms. Currently, commercial supersonic aircraft are banned from flying over land because of the noise and potential damage the booms may cause. WTOP reports: "The long, slender design of the aircraft is the key to achieving a low sonic boom," said Peter Iosifidis, Low Boom Flight Demonstrator program manager at Lockheed Martin. "As we enter into the manufacturing phase, the aircraft structure begins to take shape, bringing us one step closer to enabling supersonic travel for passengers around the world," he said.

Lockheed expects to conduct its first flight in 2021 and gather community response data on the acceptability of the "quiet sonic boom" the plane creates. NASA will use that information to establish an acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard to overturn current regulations banning supersonic travel over land. The X-59 will cruise at a speed of about 940 mph and an altitude of 55,000 feet. Lockheed says it will create a sound about as loud as a car door closing, instead of a deafening sonic boom.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A spinning turbine that can capture wind traveling in any direction and could transform how consumers generate electricity in cities has won its inventors a prestigious international award and ~$38,000 prize. Nicolas Orellana, 36, and Yaseen Noorani, 24, MSc students at Lancaster University, scooped the James Dyson award for their O-Wind Turbine, which -- in a technological first -- takes advantage of both horizontal and vertical winds without requiring steering.

O-Wind Turbine is a 25cm sphere with geometric vents that sits on a fixed axis and spins when wind hits it from any direction. When wind energy turns the device, gears drive a generator that converts the power of the wind into electricity. The students believe the device, which could take at least five years to be put into commercial production, could be installed on large structures such as the side of a building or balcony, where wind speeds are highest. Dyson, who chose the winners, hailed it as "an ingenious concept." He continued: "Designing something that solves a problem is an intentionally broad brief. It invites talented, young inventors to do more than just identify real problems. It empowers them to use their ingenuity to develop inventive solutions. O-Wind Turbine does exactly that. It takes the enormous challenge of producing renewable energy and using geometry it can harness energy in places where we've scarcely been looking -- cities."