Students who struggled through the height of the Covid-19 pandemic -- between March 2020 and early 2023 -- are still having trouble keeping up with course work, according to a study from the nonprofit NWEA, which focuses on education research.

Fall Guys has finally launched on some new platforms, along with its new free-to-play model. The switch has seen a few changes roll out to the game such as a brand new Season Pass. But what is it?

Xbox “passed” on exclusive rights to share the Spider-Man video games before it was snapped up Sony's Playstation.

Giving Deshaun Watson a fully guaranteed $230 million contract has turned into another disaster for the Cleveland Browns

LEHI, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 11, 2023--

Bots are better and significantly faster than humans at cracking Captcha tests, according to a comprehensive new study that inspected the security system deployed in over 100 popular websites. Automated bots pose a significant threat to the internet because they can masquerade as legitimate human users and perform harmful operations like scraping content, creating accounts and posting fake comments or reviews, as well as consuming scarce resources. “If left unchecked, bots can perform these nefarious actions at scale,” warned scientists, including those from the University of California, Irvine. For over two decades, Captchas have been deployed as security checks by websites to block potentially harmful bots by presenting puzzles that are supposed to be straightforward for people to solve – but very difficult for computers. Earlier forms of Captcha, for instance, asked users to transcribe distorted text from an image, but with advances in computer vision and machine learning, bots soon caught up to recognise the text with near perfect accuracy. Engaged in an arms race with bots, Captchas have since evolved into an annoying presence on the internet, becoming increasingly more and more difficult to solve for both bots and humans. However, the new yet-to-be peer-reviewed research, posted in arXiv, finds bots are able to quickly crack Captcha tests with ease, suggesting global effort users put into cracking these puzzles every day may be more trouble than its worth. In the study, scientists assessed 200 of the most popular websites and found 120 still used Captcha. They took the help of 1,000 participants online from diverse backgrounds – varying in location, age, sex and educational level – to take 10 captcha tests on these sites and gauge their difficulty levels. Researchers found many bots described in scientific journals could beat humans at these tests in both speed and accuracy. Some captcha tests took human participants between nine and 15 seconds to solve, with an accuracy of about 50 to 84 per cent, while it took the bots less than a second to crack them, with up to near perfection. “The bots’ accuracy ranges from 85-100 per cent, with the majority above 96 per cent. This substantially exceeds the human accuracy range we observed (50-85 per cent),” scientists wrote in the study. They also found that the bots’ solving times are “significantly lower” or nearly the same as humans in almost all cases. Since current Captchas do not meet the required security goal of keeping bots away, researchers have called for better and more dynamic approaches to protect websites. Read More Shock for millions of voters as details exposed in hack – which went undetected for a year AI-driven cyberattack can now steal your passwords with near 100 per cent accuracy, study warns More than a million NHS patients’ details compromised after cyberattack Many adults would struggle to understand video-sharing platforms’ rules – Ofcom Now even Zoom tells staff: ‘Come back to the office’ Ozzy Osbourne PlayStation tweet which failed to reveal link to Sony banned

US President Joe Biden donned the signature red T-shirt of America's biggest car workers union and lashed out at Donald Trump Thursday as he tried to fire up their...

The event will be broadcast live on streamer Ibai's channel on Twitch for free

12 WNBA players have broken the mold and been honored with their own signature shoe. It's time for the next wave of talent to get one as well.

Japan is aiming to become the first country in the world to beam solar energy from space back to Earth to generate electricity at scale. A public-private partnership led by Japanese space agency JAXA will see the first satellite transmitters set up by 2025, according to local reports, The satellites will convert solar power into microwaves and send them to ground-based receiving stations, which then convert it into electrical energy. “If we can demonstrate our technology ahead of the rest of the world, it will also be a bargaining tool for space development with other countries,” Kyoto University professor Naoki Shinohara told Nikkei. The concept, which was first theorised in 1968, has several advantages over terrestrial solar power setups, notably being able to harvest solar energy for much longer, unhindered by the Sun’s typical cycle. Microwaves are capable of passing through clouds, so the technology is also able to operate in adverse weather conditions. Japan has already achieved several firsts in this field, having been the first to transmit power via microwaves in space in the 1980s. In 2015, JAXA scientists followed this up with another breakthrough that saw 1.8 kilowatts of power beamed down to an Earth-based receiver – roughly enough to power an electrical kettle. Several other countries and regions are also working on the technology, with the European Space Agency unveiling a plan last year to test the viability of space-based solar power. The Solaris program aims to make Europe a global leader in this untapped energy resource, with the hope of setting up a development program in 2025. More research still needs to be done before it becomes feasible at a significant scale, though recent advances in high-efficiency solar cells, wireless power transmission and robotic in-orbit assembly mean that China and the US are also working on ways to tap the Sun’s energy from space. Among the concerns surrounding the technology are the health impacts of low-power microwaves on humans, animals and plants. “These are the kind of technical questions that Solaris will look into, to explore further the feasibility of the concept,” Sanjay Vijendran, ESA’s lead for the Solaris proposal, said last year. “As an added plus, any breakthroughs achieved in these areas will be valuable in their own right, applicable to many other spaceflight endeavours.” Read More Scientists break world record for solar power window material Huge ‘plume’ seen coming out of nearby moon that could support alien life Elon Musk meets Chinese foreign minister on first visit for three years Mitigating ‘extinction’ from AI should be ‘global priority’, experts say

The Florida teenager who beat Noah Lyles in a 100 meter race in April has been suspended for a positive doping test

TikTok creators worldwide are uploading their interpretation of the viral TikTok trend based on the lyrics of the 1964 song 'The Girl from Ipanema'