Pok\'emon Red, a classic Game Boy JRPG, presents significant challenges as a testbed for agents, including multi-tasking, long horizons of tens of thousands of steps, hard exploration, and a vast array of potential policies. We introduce a simplistic environment and a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) training methodology, demonstrating a baseline agent that completes an initial segment of the game up to completing Cerulean City. Our experiments include various ablations that reveal vulnerabilities in reward shaping, where agents exploit specific reward signals. We also discuss limitations and argue that games like Pok\'emon hold strong potential for future research on Large Language Model agents, hierarchical training algorithms, and advanced exploration methods. Source Code: https://github.com/MarcoMeter/neroRL/tree/poke_red

Chilling words in the Bible's Book of Revelation seem to describe events in the early Christian world - but are they actually predicting a nuclear explosion during a future world war? 'Something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea… a third of the living creatures in the sea died,' the ancient text reads. The Book of Revelation (written towards the end of the first century AD) is packed with imagery which could describe modern weapons technologies such as helicopter or drone fleets and even robot soldiers, explained Jared Brock, author of'A Devil Named Lucifer.' Brock said that it's very easy to read Revelation and map the fall of previous empires onto it, such as the Roman Empire or the British Empire. However, the author wonders if it could be describing the future fall of the United States instead. Brock studied scripture intently as part of the research for his book - and found echoes of recent world events in the Book of Revelation and throughout the Bible.

In early 2021, long before ChatGPT became a household name, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman self-published a manifesto of sorts, titled "Moore's Law for Everything." The original Moore's Law, formulated in 1965, describes the development of microchips, the tiny silicon wafers that power your computer. More specifically, it predicted that the number of transistors that engineers could cram onto a chip would roughly double every year. As Altman sees it, something like that astonishing rate of progress will soon apply to housing, food, medicine, education--everything. The vision is nothing short of utopian.

Prof. Kristy K. Brock is currently a Professor with tenure in the Department of Imaging Physics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she is the Director for the Image-Guided Cancer Therapy Research Program. Her research has focused on image guided cancer therapy, where she has developed a biomechanical model-based deformable image registration algorithm to integrate imaging into treatment planning, delivery, and response assessment as well as to understand and validate imaging signals through correlative pathology. Her algorithm was licensed and incorporated into a commercial treatment planning system. She is board certified by the American Board of Radiology in Therapeutic Medical Physics and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Radiation Physics at MD Anderson. Dr. Brock has published over 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals, is the Editor of the book'Image Processing in Radiation Therapy' and has been the PI/co-PI on over 25 peer-reviewed, industry, and institutional grants.

Bright yellow and looking like a headless deer, Spot can travel across ground too risky for humans. "Built for dirt and danger," in the words of its maker Boston Dynamics, this robot is now helping humans battle a different threat: the spread of coronavirus. Equipped with an iPad and two-way radio, Spot has been making the rounds at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston since April. Medical technicians use the robot to interview patients with suspected COVID-19 remotely, with no need to don personal protective equipment. Think of it as mobile telemedicine.

Vyopta, the leader in digital collaboration and experience optimization, today announced it has achieved U.S. Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Authority to Operate (ATO). Vyopta earned this authorization in partnership with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), its sponsoring agency. Vyopta is the only multi-vendor collaboration solution available in the FedRAMP Marketplace. FedRAMP is one of the most extensive security authorizations cloud services providers can achieve. It provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud services to ensure all federal data is secure in cloud environments.

On Monday, Heritage Auctions sold off an unopened copy of the 1996 Nintendo 64 game Super Mario 64 for $1.56 million. According to the auction house, there were 16 bids, and the final price is the highest ever for a single video game. The vintage video-game trade has been booming over the past three years, especially during the pandemic, but this selling price even has seasoned collectors shocked and scratching their heads. A sealed Super Mario 64 just sold for $1,560,000 @HeritageAuction. "I myself and many other in this space are just blown away with these results," said Donald Brock Jr., owner of the collectibles site Columbia Comics.

In a recent New Yorker article about the Capitol siege, Ronan Farrow described how investigators used a bevy of online data and facial recognition technology to confirm the identity of Larry Rendall Brock Jr., an Air Force Academy graduate and combat veteran from Texas. Brock was photographed inside the Capitol carrying zip ties, presumably to be used to restrain someone. Brock was arrested Sunday and charged with two counts.) Even as they stormed the Capitol, many rioters stopped to pose for photos and give excited interviews on livestream. Each photo uploaded, message posted, and stream shared created a torrent of data for police, researchers, activists, and journalists to archive and analyze.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning get lumped together so often these days that it'd be easy for people to mistake them as synonymous. That's not quite accurate, though: They're most certainly connected but not actually interchangeable. "Artificial intelligence and machine learning are closely related, so it's no surprise that the terms are used loosely and interchangeably," says Bill Brock, VP of engineering at Very. If you're not using AI or ML yet, you soon will be evaluating its potential for your organization. "AI as a workload is going to become the primary driver for IT strategy," Daniel Riek, senior director, AI, Office of the CTO, Red Hat, recently told us.

Machine learning is already pervasive: Most people probably don't realize it. "Whether or not you know it, odds are that machine learning powers applications that you use every day," says Bill Brock, VP of engineering at Very. "Machine learning has revolutionized countless industries; it's the underlying technology for many apps in your smartphone, from virtual assistants like Siri to predicting traffic patterns with Google Maps." Perhaps you care more about the accuracy of that traffic prediction or the voice assistant's response than what's under the hood – and understandably so. But as machine learning use cases continue to increase, you will find yourself needing to explain at least the basics of the technology to folks outside of IT, whether it's to get buy-in, to showcase the work of your team, or simply to build better communication and understanding between departments. Your understanding of ML could also bolster the long-term results of your artificial intelligence strategy.