Much of the internet appears to be broken. A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack has taken down systems run by Dyn, Inc, one of the largest providers of internet services in the world. And as a result it seems to be causing problems for a variety of websites – including Reddit, Spotify and Twitter. Dyn runs domain name servers or DNS. They work as a phone book or map to the internet, making sure that when someone writes an address into their computer or phone, it can be directed to the right place and show the right information.

WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the most secure chat platforms, according to Amnesty International. But that decision has already met with scepticism from people in the technology community, some of whom have warned that it might not be safe to use the apps at all. Amnesty gave Facebook and WhatsApp a score of 73 out of 100 – its highest – to the two apps, which it didn't distinguish between. But it particularly picked out WhatsApp, which it said was "the only app where users are explicitly warned when end-to-end encryption is not applied to a particular chat". It did have some criticism for Facebook, which doesn't apply strong encryption by default and doesn't warn users that they're not using the most secure technology.

The largest actors union in Hollywood officially called a strike early Friday morning against several prominent video game companies after the two sides failed to reach an agreement on an increase in compensation for performers who do voice-over and motion-capture work for popular games. SAG-AFTRA said Friday the work stoppage began at 12:01 a.m. Friday and covers games made by the companies that went into production after Feb. 17, 2015. Many of the most sophisticated games take years to develop and bring to market, and employ large casts of actors over that development process. Members of SAG-AFTRA are planning to picket one of the companies -- Electronic Arts -- at its location in Playa Vista on Monday.

It's no secret that President Obama is a blerd--a big-time sci-fi buff and a huge proponent of advancing STEM. He just served as guest editor of popular geek'zine Wired's November issue. President Obama launched a number of STEM-related initiatives and at his most recent event, the White House Frontiers Conference, revealed specifics on how the United States will push technology and innovation. At the conference, held in Pittsburgh last week, the Obama administration announced that 300 million would go toward science, technology, and innovation. The investment is "to develop the industries of the future and harness science and technology to help address important challenges," according to a press release issued by The White House.

John Bassett, a British spy who worked for the agency GCHQ for nearly two decades, has told Daily Express that the U.S. was considering plans to employ thousands of robots by 2025. At a meeting with police and counter-terrorism officials in London, he said: "At some point around 2025 or thereabouts the U.S. army will actually have more combat robots than it will have human soldiers. Many of those combat robots are trucks that can drive themselves, and they will get better at not falling off cliffs. But some of them are rather more exciting than trucks. So we will see in the West combat robots outnumber human soldiers."

Investigators hunting for debris from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are about to be joined by a mechanical teammate. In the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's weekly operational update on the MH370 search released Wednesday, officials revealed they were installing a robot on one of the two vessels scanning the ocean floor for wreckage. The Associated Press called it a "drone." The Dong Hai Jiu 101 was in Fremantle this week being set up with the Remora III, a remotely operated vehicle with video cameras and high-tech sensors. Its mission is to "reacquire and investigate, through video imaging, a range of sonar contacts which have been identified during previous deep tow operations," according to the bureau.

There would always be a first death in a driverless car and it happened in May 2016. Joshua Brown had engaged the autopilot system in his Tesla when a tractor-trailor drove across the road in front of him. It seems that neither he nor the sensors in the autopilot noticed the white-sided truck against a brightly lit sky, with tragic results. Of course many people die in car crashes every day – in the USA there is one fatality every 94 million miles, and according to Tesla this was the first known fatality in over 130 million miles of driving with activated autopilot. In fact, given that most road fatalities are the result of human error, it has been said that autonomous cars should make travelling safer.

Medical imaging leaders are facing a number of challenges in the ongoing transformation of care delivery, yet many of the key market forces that are changing the field also are pushing imaging toward innovation, according to many imaging informatics leaders at a recent conference in New York City. At a conference focused on driving innovation in imaging, leading radiologists and imaging informaticists shared their perspectives on the future of medical imaging and the role that imaging plays in the transition to value-based care and population health initiatives. The event was sponsored by New York City-based Ambra Health, formerly DICOM Grid, a medical data and image management company. There are key industry forces pushing radiology to innovate, notably care delivery transformation, imaging consumerism and the overall growth outlook for the radiology field, Lea Halim, senior consultant at Washington, D.C.-based The Advisory Board's Research and Insights division, said. Halim also said there are industry and economic trends impacting the growth outlook for imaging.

It is Thursday, Oct. 20. Disney and Dole Food Co. are partnering to get kids to eat their fruits and vegetables. California's proposed rules for self-driving vehicles are getting pushback from vehicle makers and industry groups that fear the regulations could slow development of the technology and conflict with more flexible federal rules. Has homelessness in Los Angeles gotten bad enough that Angelenos will be willing to tax themselves in order to help others? Proposition HHH asks voters to authorize 1.2 billion in borrowing to build housing with on-site clinical services.

Why is this ad appearing on this site? This was a frequent questions both advertisers and publishers asked of Google. Behind the scenes, machine learning models match the best ad to the best website, given a set of constraints including budget and the dynamics of the ad auction. To untangle the decision chain across the many different targeting systems to answer the question is a knotty task indeed. In March, the head of Google research Peter Norvig spoke at MIT.