Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. L.A.'s defense industry is booming. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . L.A. defense-tech startups like Gambit face funding shortfalls as the Small Business Innovation Research program expired in September amid a Capitol Hill dispute.

In each round of a Swiss-system tournament, players of similar score are paired against each other. An intentional early loss therefore might lead to weaker opponents in later rounds and thus to a better final tournament result - a phenomenon known as the Swiss Gambit. To the best of our knowledge it is an open question whether this strategy can actually work. This paper provides answers based on an empirical agent-based analysis for the most prominent application area of the Swiss-system format, namely chess tournaments. We simulate realistic tournaments by employing the official FIDE pairing system for computing the player pairings in each round. We show that even though gambits are widely possible in Swiss-system chess tournaments, profiting from them requires a high degree of predictability of match results. Moreover, even if a Swiss Gambit succeeds, the obtained improvement in the final ranking is limited. Our experiments prove that counting on a Swiss Gambit is indeed a lot more of a risky gambit than a reliable strategy to improve the final rank.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) has unveiled its newest unmanned aerial system called Gambit, the jet-powered platform intended to demonstrate so-called loyal wingman capabilities for the U.S. Air Force (USAF). The device's name refers to the chess world where Gambit is a chess opening move in which a player risks losing a minor piece to obtain a significant advantage in position. General Atomics describes Gambit as "an Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP) designed through digital engineering to speed its time to market and lower acquisition cost." The platform is being built for air dominance and will heavily leverage advances in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. Working together with other human-piloted aircraft, Gambit will enable pilots to see deeper into hostile airspace, detect threats first, and provide time and space for critical decisions and actions.

Next moves: learn chemistry, synthesise molecules, take over world? Elegant retrosynthesis is an artform, it is strategic: you need to plan ahead, but also be able to adapt, if reactions do not work out. When the lockdown in 2020 started, I came upon those very same patterns in completely different field – chess. With everyone stuck at home, online chess suddenly became highly popular, especially after the release of the series The Queen's Gambit. My friends and I were among those who gave it a shot.

"Valorant," released in June 2020, is a first-person tactical shooter in which teams of five square off to be the first to win 13 rounds. Attacking teams need to plant a bomb in a designated site and stop opponents from defusing it. Defenders, by contrast, need to keep attackers away from the bomb sites or defuse the bomb once it has been planted. Also, both teams can win a round by killing all of their opponents.

From the time he was a small boy, Lei Jun strived to get close to technology. But in the rural China of the early 1980s, his teacher father's monthly salary of $7 put a $2,000 Apple II far out of reach. So Lei devised elaborate ways to fiddle with anything high-tech. He would wait for hours outside his school's tiny computer lab, hoping to sneak in when a classmate missed his allotted turn. He took odd programing jobs–once working 72 hours straight without sleep–just to use a client's PC. "I even drew a keyboard on a sheet of paper and spent classes secretly practicing typing, so I could use my time at the computer more efficiently," Lei says.

In Andy Rubin's past career stops, the former Android co-founder has generally managed to be either ahead of the curve or close to it. At Danger Inc., Rubin helped produce the T-Mobile Sidekick and with Android, he also nurtured the mobile operating system into Apple's biggest competitor in the smartphone marketplace. Essential, the new consumer electronics company from Rubin, doesn't necessarily fit the same mold. At last week's Code Conference, Rubin admitted a smartphone is more "technology evolution" than rocket science. But the upcoming Essential Phone is, at least against the current smartphone market, a similarly aggressive moonshot.