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Where is Microsoft and what have you done with them?

Updated Microsoft emitted a fresh preview of command-line darling PowerShell 7 last night, highlighting some additional slurping – and how to shut it off.…

'Project Marble' focuses on quality ahead of big features

Google has released Android Studio 3.5, codenamed Project Marble, saying that the team has worked for eight months on product quality ahead of big new features.…

Weak pound and China trade war make Blighty attractive proposition – research

Foreign investors poured $6.7bn (£5.5bn) into the UK tech sector in the first seven months of the year, more than the whole of 2018.…

Hoddesdon bit barn outage blamed as customer emails falter, corporate sites go dark

Updated Hosting-cum-cloud-slinger Claranet had a very, very bad start to Wednesday as customer sites toppled over and email services stuttered to a halt due to an issue at one of the company's server estates.…

Mountain of digital detritus 'not sustainable' – survey

Brits are stockpiling an estimated 40 million old phones and laptops instead of recycling their digital detritus, which contain elements that could run out in the near future.…

If you want to train neural networks quickly, keep packing in the transistors

Hot Chips The machine-learning world is obsessed with training AI models as quickly as possible and if the hardware community is to keep up, future chips will need to have more memory.…

Keep your media player, like other apps, up to date: 13 security flaws fixed

VideoLAN has issued an update to address a baker's dozen of CVE-listed security vulnerabilities in its widely used VLC player software.…

Biggest recruiters for techies remain AWS, NHS and BSkyB Group

IT job postings in the UK are being battered by Brexit and the lingering uncertainty of leaving the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement on 31 October.…

Thief swipes Reg vulture's computer from under his fingers in cafe – here's what happened next

Comment There were two fleeting moments of confusion: first when he grabbed my laptop from under my fingers and took off racing out the coffee shop; and second, when it became clear that the license plate wasn't real.…

Scale Computing is here to drill through all the buzz

Webcast As organisations see their volume of data growing at an ever-faster rate, many find themselves struggling to manage this avalanche of information, not just securely but without incurring exorbitant costs.…

Russian bank-hacking ring continues its global expansion

The rapidly growing hacking crew dubbed Silence, has – in less than three years – gone from ransacking small regional banks in Eastern Europe to stealing millions from some of the largest international banks.…

Fall is one of the best times of year for online poker. The weather begins to cool so people have more of a desire to stay inside (unless you are me, can’t stand hot weather, and prefer to venture outdoors when it cools off). The kids go back to school so we grown-ups have more time to play. And it is the season when PokerStars hosts the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), whose schedule was published on Monday.

There will be 73 events this year, spanning September 5th through September 23rd. Each event will have three tiers – High, Medium, and Low – except for the Main Event, which will have just two. Speaking of which, the $5,200 Main Event (High buy-in) will start at 1:00pm server time on September 22nd and will have a $10 million guarantee. All told, there is more than $75 million in guarantees across the entire 2019 WCOOP.

Buy-ins range from $2.20 to $25,000.

As always, there will be a WCOOP Leaderboard, where players earn points for their finishes in WCOOP events. Points vary based on tournament structure, but it is general 100 points for a first place finish, 80 for second, and down to 5 or 10 for the lowest places to cash. For reference, a player named “aDrENalin710” took the overall leaderboard title last year with 1,325 points.

Each buy-in tier has its own leaderboard, with the top three points earners in each winning cash. The overall points earner will win $20,000 cash and a trophy.

There are also loads of satellites via which players can qualify, as well as special 2019 WCOOP Spin & Go’s. As always, the odds of playing for the grand prize, a WCOOP Main Event ticket, are very low, but overall, the probabilities of good prizes aren’t all that bad. For example, in the $25 WCOOP Spin & Go, the chances of having either a $5,200 Main Event ticket, a $215 WCOOP ticket, or a $109 WCOOP ticket be the prize are 11.6 percent. That’s not great, but I would have imagined it to be worse.

Anyone who qualifies for a WCOOP event via a satellite will be automatically registered for the applicable tournament and will not be able to unregister. Subsequent wins for the same event will be paid in PokerStars tournament dollars.

Deals will be permitted at final tables of WCOOP events and PokerStars will even help facilitate them. Deals are not, however, allowed in WCOOP satellites.

Because it is the “World” Championship of Online Poker, there are also national bragging rights at stake. It was a close one last year, with Brazil eeking out a title against the United Kingdom, 23 WCOOP wins to 22. Russia was a distant third with 14 wins. And if you were wondering, even though PokerStars has a New Jersey-based site, the United States is not part of the WCOOP. New Jersey is ring-fenced from the international PokerStars sites, so players in the Garden State will only be able to participate if they fly to a jurisdiction where PokerStars operates.

The complete 2019 WCOOP schedule can be found here.

The post PokerStars Publishes 2019 WCOOP Schedule appeared first on Poker News Daily.

...Knowing they just cannot duck Git: Repos to be deleted when support ends

The announcement this week that Bitbucket is dropping support for Mercurial is another nail in the coffin for the software.…

Forget Mars, Jupiter’s moon could be where life’s at

NASA has confirmed its Europa Clipper spacecraft will head off to the Jovian moon in search of signs of life and a landing zone for future exploration.…

Renovations would impede operations

It seems like temporary casino gaming shutdowns are a theme today. I wrote about some games at Wind Creek Bethlehem being taken out of service during the casino’s rebranding, but what will be going on next year at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is much more extreme. As the familiar off-Strip landmark is renovated to make the change to Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, the property will close completely from early February 2020 until close to the end of the year.

The plan had been to complete the first four months of the renovation in phases so that the property could be kept open. After four months, the entire property would close until everything was done. But as plans were developed, management decided that it would be too difficult.

Hard Rock/Virgin Hotels partner and CEO Richard “Boz” Bosworth said of the decision in a media statement:

We determined that a phased closing of four months, followed by a total closure of four months was not efficient from a construction process nor could we provide a hospitality service experience our guests deserve. Therefore an approximate eight-month closure would be most efficient and ensure a timely opening prior to January 2021. We might be ready in October, but construction is an imperfect process. Until early February 2020 it is business as usual at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas. Virgin Hotels Las Vegas promises to be one of the most exciting, vibrant, and anticipated properties to open in Las Vegas in years.

Company trying to help employees

An unfortunate biproduct of the extended closure is that more than 1,600 employees will be without jobs post-Super Bowl. While no solution is perfect, Hard Rock/Virgin is trying to right by its workers with something called the “Stick Around and Come Back” program.

Naturally, a lot of the staff are going to start getting their resumes out to other casinos immediately, as they don’t want to be stuck come February. Their departures, of course, will make things harder for the casino while it is still open. Therefore, the casino will reward employees who stay until the closing date with a cash bonus of up to 10 weeks pay. In addition, those who want to return to Virgin Hotels Las Vegas when the doors open back up in late 2020 will not need to interview for their old jobs. They can just apply and get their positions back.

Maybe I’ll buy the guitar

Virgin Group acquired Hard Rock Las Vegas in March 2018 with the intention of rebranding it to Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. The immediately recognizable giant Fender Stratocaster out front will disappear, though Virgin founder Richard Branson said that his company’s logo does have a “giant V” that is “sort of guitar-shaped,” so there might be a replacement that somewhat, kind of resembles the guitar. It is kind of a shame, to be honest.

Renovations are expected to cost more than $200 million, up from an earlier estimate of $150 million. The Joint rock club, pool deck, and all 1,500 guest rooms will be renovated, among other changes.

The post Hard Rock Las Vegas to Close for Most of 2020 as It Becomes Virgin Hotels Las Vegas appeared first on Poker News Daily.

Developer account cracked due to credential reuse, source tampered with and released to hundreds of programmers

An old version of a Ruby software package called rest-client that was modified and released about a week ago has been removed from the Ruby Gems repository – because it was found to be deliberately leaking victims' credentials to a remote server.…

FCC delivers postmortem after blunder cripples US fiber links

A handful of bad network packets triggered a massive chain reaction that crippled the entire network of US telco CenturyLink for roughly a day and a half.…

Many patrons of the Pennsylvania casino Wind Creek Bethlehem were likely surprised today when they walked in to play some blackjack, only to see the blackjack tables closed. Same for craps, three card poker, roulette, and every other manually dealt table on the casino floor. This is because beginning at 6:00am, all non-electronic table games were taken offline as the casino put new, Wind Creek-branded chips in play. Everything is expected to open back up at about 10:00pm tonight.

The chip change is part of the property’s transition from Sands Bethlehem to Wind Creek Bethlehem. Sands Bethlehem, owned by Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp., was acquired by Wind Creek Hospitality, an affiliate of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians of Alabama, for $1.3 billion in March 2018. Casino management had told its employees a year prior that a buyer had been found, but it was expected to be MGM, not Wind Creek. Sands Bethlehem, the second largest casino in Pennsylvani by revenue, immediately became the giant of Wind Creek’s portfolio.

Wind Creek also operates Wind Creek-branded three casinos in Alabama, as well as other-branded casinos in Alabama, Florida, Nevada, Curacao, and Aruba.

The sale of the casino was completed in late May of this year.

The branding turnaround began immediately. One of the most daunting tasks was removing the 3,187 square-foot “Sands” sign on the face of the old ore crane at the Bethlehem Works site and replacing it with 3,880 square-foot sign containing the “Wind Creek” name and company logo. Locals have been having fun with it, as the letters are not going up in order, making it look like a “Wheel of Fortune” puzzle. The order is not random, though, but rather planned in order to make installation easier.

Next week, there will be two more gaming outages. On Monday, August 26th, about 1,200 slot machines will be shut down while the casino’s systems are upgraded. Another 2,000 or so will remain in service. Then, beginning at midnight, the slot FREE play will be out of service for system upgrades. They are expected to get back online by about 2:00pm Tuesday.

Total rebranding efforts will cost $15 million.

One of the big, long-term plans for the property is to turn the former Bethlehem Steel site’s No. 2 Machine Shop into a 300,000 square-foot adventure and water park with a 400-room hotel. The project is expected to cost $250 million. $100 million of the funding used to buy Sands Bethlehem was earmarked for the project, but Wind Creek is still seeking a cash injection for the rest.

In the meantime, Wind Creek does have $90 million for a smaller project to build a 276-room hotel on the property. In addition, it will build out 42,000 more square feet of meeting space. Nothing has happened with this yet, as it still needs to get the approval of the local government.

Wind Creek Bethlehem will eventually have online gambling, including poker, casino games, and sports betting. The irony of this is that Sheldon Adelson, who, as mentioned is the Chief Executive of the casino’s former parent company, is online gambling’s enemy number one in the United States.

The post Wind Creek Bethlehem Temporarily Shutting Down Games During Branding Transition appeared first on Poker News Daily.

Where will you stand now that Redmond has raised the web-surfing stakes?

Microsoft has rolled out the first beta version of its Chromium-based Edge web browser.…

Big Blue says it will open OpenPower, power next-gen chips in China, er, anywhere

IBM is planning to allow chip designers around the world to freely create OpenPower-compatible processors.…