Microsoft has been on a gaming acquisition tear for the last few years, hoping to give the edge to its Xbox and Game Pass platforms as Sony's PlayStation continues to dominate with exclusive titles. The company previously purchased such notable companies as ZeniMax (AKA Bethesda), Minecraft developer Mojang, Id, Obsidian, Ninja Theory, Rare, Double Fine, and 343 Industries. But the computer giant's next purchase is so big it might shake the foundations of the gaming industry: Activision Blizzard. The news comes from as an official announcement from Microsoft itself, emblazoned with its prospective acquisition's biggest game series like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush. The acquisition is valued at $68.7 billion with Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard stock shares at $95 each. The deal is being given a full media blitz with a promotional page, press release, blog posts, open letters to employees, and even a map of the proposed management team.

With the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) report painting a worrying picture of our battle against climate change, we will explore five ways analytics can help turn the tide. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, called the report "a code red for humanity," adding that "the alarm bells are deafening and evidence irrefutable." U.S. President Joe Biden said about it, "The cost of inaction is mounting." In summary, without immediate action, the damage we've done may be irreversible. For this to change, we're going to have to rely on the latest tools and technologies, including big data, advanced analytics, modeling, and simulation techniques.

More than 40% of all employees were thinking about leaving their jobs at the beginning of 2021, and as the year went on, workers quit in unprecedented numbers.1 Between April and September 2021, more than 24 million American employees left their jobs, an all-time record.2 As the Great Resignation rolls on, business leaders are struggling to make sense of the factors driving the mass exodus. More importantly, they are looking for ways to hold on to valued employees. To better understand the sources of the Great Resignation and help leaders respond effectively, we analyzed 34 million online employee profiles to identify U.S. workers who left their employer for any reason (including quitting, retiring, or being laid off) between April and September 2021.3 The data, from Revelio Labs, where one of us (Ben) is the CEO, enabled us to estimate company-level attrition rates for the Culture 500, a sample of large, mainly for-profit companies that together employ nearly one-quarter of the private-sector workforce in the United States.4 Monthly research-based updates on what the future of work means for your workplace, teams, and culture. While resignation rates are high on average, they are not uniform across companies.

The announcement from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer comes as Activision Blizzard faces a series of crises: In July, the publisher was sued by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing; the state agency's suit alleging widespread gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment at the company. Activision Blizzard also faces a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, as well as a class-action lawsuit instigated by shareholders and an unfair labor practices complaint filed by workers and the media labor union Communications Workers of America. The publisher's CEO, Bobby Kotick, has faced repeated calls by employees to step down.

DEERFIELD, Ill., Jan. 18, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Surgalign Holdings, Inc., (NASDAQ: SRGA) a global medical technology company focused on elevating the standard of care by driving the evolution of digital health, today announced that it has received U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance for its HOLO Portal surgical guidance system for use within lumbar spine procedures. The HOLO Portal system is the world's first artificial intelligence (AI)-driven augmented reality (AR) guidance system for spine and the first clinical application of Surgalign's HOLOTM AI digital health platform. "Receiving the initial clearance for the HOLO Portal system is a significant milestone and represents a critical step toward building the foundation of the digital surgery of the future. This system is designed to improve patient outcomes by delivering intelligent solutions to our customers, and we believe it is truly revolutionary," said Terry Rich, Surgalign's president and chief executive officer. "With clearance in hand for our guidance application, our near-term focus is getting the platform into the hands of surgeons as we work towards a market release. While the current capabilities of the HOLO Portal system have the potential to offer a quantum leap in the way surgical procedures are performed, we have a much larger vision for our HOLO AI digital health platform across a variety of healthcare specialties and throughout the care continuum."

A deadly drone attack by Yemen's Houthis on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has exposed the country's vulnerability while jeopardising its reputation as a tourism and business hub and pushing it towards rapprochement with neighbouring Tehran, say analysts. The Iran-backed Houthi rebel group targeted a key oil facility in Abu Dhabi, killing three people. The suspected drone attack also caused a fire at Abu Dhabi's international airport, attracting condemnation and a pledge for retaliation from the UAE. Hailing the attack as "a successful military operation", the Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree warned they could target more facilities in the UAE, which has been part of the Saudi-led war on Yemen that has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed the country towards humanitarian catastrophe. On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia launched air raids in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, killing more than a dozen people.

Hosted by Ben Byford, The Machine Ethics Podcast brings together interviews with academics, authors, business leaders, designers and engineers on the subject of autonomous algorithms, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and technology's impact on society. Merve Hickok is the Senior Research Director of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, and the Founder of AIethicist.org. She is a social researcher, consultant and trainer on AI ethics & policy. Her work on AI is focused on bias, social justice, DE&I, public interest and participatory development and governance. She aims to create awareness, build capacity, and advocate for ethical and responsible development & use of AI.

In 2019, a team of researchers published a meta-review of studies claiming a person's emotion can be inferred from their facial movements. They concluded that there's no evidence emotional state can be predicted from expression – regardless of whether a human or technology is making the determination. "[Facial expressions] in question are not'fingerprints' or diagnostic displays that reliably and specifically signal particular emotional states regardless of context, person, and culture," the coauthors wrote. "It is not possible to confidently infer happiness from a smile, anger from a scowl, or sadness from a frown." Alan Cowen might disagree with this assertion.

This is a book with three authors, which is both unusual and tricky because, while reading it, you're constantly wondering who might have written the section or sentence before you. Unsurprisingly, it is a book incapable of entering into functional relationships. You cannot settle down with it or get to know the mind that created it, so as to succumb to or fight against it. This book has an insinuating purpose that is not literary, not purposefully discursive, not even argumentative. What it advances is a rather sly, self-interested, and one-sided brief for how the most pressing issue currently facing the human race might be boxed off to the benefit of you-know-who.

Its adoption accelerated, and leaders correctly predicted growth in the industry in all aspects. Overall, organisations invested more in Data Science, and there was an upswing in the Data Science jobs. While the median salaries of analytics professionals saw a slight decline at the start of the year, a rising trend was witnessed again in the recent months, which will continue to be the case in the coming year. The inefficiencies of Data Science teams from development to deployment in the real world were observed before but they became even more evident due to the pandemic. The operationalisation and scaling of Machine Learning models through structured frameworks was the talk of 2021. These processes will start getting streamlined in the coming years. The Data Science industry also realised the breadth of roles needed for these deployments. While generalists will continue to be in demand, niche roles will play an important role going forward, especially Data Engineers. Subsequently, the role of education will also evolve. It will become further formalised with more specialisation courses introduced.