The paper’s authors claim this is the world’s first demonstration of quantum supremacy, according to a cached-version available here: Some experts believe this to be a watershed moment in the history of technology and the heralding of a new era in computing. The only problem: the research was quickly removed from NASA’s website and, as of the time of this article’s publishing, neither Google nor the space agency is responding to journalists’ requests for comment....

For that reason, they have been facing global scrutiny for forcing developers to use their payment systems and charging them with an up to 30% commission. Governments around the world have been seeking to curb their control, but to no avail. Until now. South Korea’s “anti-Google” law has… worked! Perhaps you remember that in August South Korea passed a new bill, dubbed also as the “anti-Google” law, banning big app store operators like Google and Apple from forcing developers to exclusively use their payments systems....

That’s right, pals, gone is this old, boring, and played out logo: In its place, we’ve been blessed with this gorgeous, totally different, and completely unrecognizable new icon in Big Sur: If you weren’t great at Spot The Difference as a younger, let me help you out: Google slammed a box around the old Chrome icon in order to make the new Chrome icon. 2020 really is the best. That’s not all though, so don’t click away just yet....

[Read: 5 things to know when you’re buying your first electric vehicle] Now you can open Google Maps, tap on the layers button on the upper-right corner, and select ‘COVID-19 info.’ The app will then display the seven-day average of cases per 100,000 people in different areas, color-coded to make case density more obvious. The colors are as follows: Grey: Less than 1 case Yellow: 1-10 cases Orange: 10-20 cases Dark orange: 20-30 cases Red: 30-40 cases Dark red: 40+ cases...

Project Zero, the search giant’s security team tasked with finding zero-day vulnerabilities in software, said they discovered a small collection of malicious websites that could be used to hack the devices, using previously undisclosed five different “exploit chains” — wherein a string of flaws are linked together to mount an attack. The group of websites — a watering hole meant to attract and infect iPhone users by penetrating iOS’s digital protections — was first tracked down by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG)....

At this point, it’s not just a leak or rumor — several people have noticed the Guacamole right in their Assistant settings, including yours truly. Tapping on this setting leads to a menu called ‘Voice shortcuts’ with a subtitle that says one can “skip saying ‘Hey Google’ for help with quick tasks. Unfortunately, toggling the feature on doesn’t actually seem to do anything at this point, and the link provided doesn’t work....

At its virtual event today, the Big G unveiled a new language model called Multilingual Representations for Indian Languages (MuRIL). This is the first model to support interoperation between 16 different Indic languages. That includes Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. While MuRIL is based on Google’s own BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) model, researchers claim it’s more efficient for Indian languages....

Earlier this year, Google teased a neural network-powered algorithm that could do speech-to-speech translation in real-time. As impressive as that might be, the app was mostly inaccessible to people with speech impediments. This is why the company’s AI division has been working on new software specifically aimed at those with verbal impairments. In a new blog post, the Big G presented a new speech-to-text technology specifically designed for people with verbal impairments and atypical speech patterns....

Project Starline aims to make video calls more natural by using a large display that shows life-size, 3D images of participants. It’s not just 3D like a 3D movie, but rather it allows you to move around and change the angle you’re seeing of the other participant. Here, it’s easier to understand if you just watch it in action: The goal is to make it seem like you’re really there with the other person, and based on Google’s demo video — which seemed to be filmed on sight rather than a pre-rendered clip — it looks eerily realistic....

Can you spot the difference? The “visual refresh,” as Google calls it, is a small one. But it’s also an important one: It makes sure the first thing you see in a search result is where information is coming from, including the site’s favicon/logo. In Google’s own words: It’s sometimes easy to forget that Google itself doesn’t actually provide much information via Search; almost everything you see is sourced from other web pages....

The option is currently available to users, though you have to opt into an “experiment,” meaning essentially a beta test. Once you do, you can play on one of the approved Android phones on which the Stadia app is available. Google also warns in the notification that data usage may increase up to 2.7 GB an hour (via 9to5Google). This is one of many features Stadia has been hurting for since its launch — better late than never....

But I often felt drained after Zoom sessions, even some of those that I had scheduled for fun. Several well-known factors – intense eye contact, slightly misaligned eye contact, being on camera, limited body movement, lack of nonverbal communication – contribute to Zoom fatigue. But I was curious about why conversation felt more laborious and awkward over Zoom and other video-conferencing software, compared with in-person interactions. As a researcher who studies psychology and linguistics, I decided to examine the impact of video-conferencing on conversation....

But that’s about to change. Astypalea, a small picturesque island in the Aegean Sea, is set to become the country’s first smart sustainable island. A few days ago, the first electric vehicles, including the first fully electric police car in Greece, were launched on the island in the presence of Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Volkswagen’s CEO Herbert Diess. The event marked the beginning of the E30million Lighthouse Project, the joint plan of the Volkswagen Group and the Greek government, which will transform Astypalea into a model island for climate-neutral mobility....

Chief among them is their tendency to make our blood boil. Historic studies dating back to the early 19th century found that hotter regions tend to have higher violent crime rates than cooler regions, and this trend is still echoed today. Even within regions, violent behavior is higher during hotter days, months, seasons, and years. This link between heat and aggression holds even when controlling for other factors that affect violent crime rates, such as poverty, unemployment, age distribution, and culture....

Yet, most social studies of algorithms perceive them as obscure black boxes that function autonomously. This isolated look at algorithms, which separates them from their human elements leads us to the wrong understanding and conclusions. The Constitution of Algorithms, a book by Florian Jaton, Postdoctoral Researcher at the STS Lab at the University of Lausanne, sheds light on the human side of algorithms by exploring them from the inside instead of studying them from afar....

Integrating micromobility in cities: the 3 major challenges Duckt was founded with this very question in mind. We believe there is a really important role that micromobility will play in the future of urban transportation, but only when we solve the problems of integration and ease of use for everybody. Before developing our product, we defined what we see as the three major issues affecting the integration of micromobility in cities around the world:...

EVs and internal combustion engine vehicles are likely to reach sticker price parity sometime in the next decade. The timing hinges on one crucial factor: battery cost. An EV’s battery pack accounts for about a quarter of total vehicle cost, making it the most important factor in the sales price. Battery pack prices have been falling fast. A typical EV battery pack stores 10-100 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity. For example, the Mitsubishi i-MIEV has a battery capacity of 16 kWh and a range of 62 miles, and the Tesla Model S has a battery capacity of 100 kWh and a range of 400 miles....

— Nintendo of Europe (@NintendoEurope) July 8, 2020 Now, if you don’t know what Nintendo Switch Online is, it’s a subscription service that not only allows you to play games over the internet, but also access two virtual consoles filled with games — specifically, SNES and NES titles. Don’t get me started about the lack of the N64 support. Now’s not the time. Anyway, the announcement of Donkey Kong Country got me thinking about these previously AAA titles appearing for practically nothing on modern consoles....

Social platforms like Facebook walk a fine line between being handy and consuming your whole life. Whether your screen time notification says you’ve spent a horrendous amount of time on your phone today, or you just don’t feel the need to share every inch of your life on a news feed anymore — it might be time to finally pull the plug on your online life and delete your account temporarily… or forever....

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 16, 2019 Here’s why: he thinks it’ll kick-start the planet and make it habitable by releasing trapped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He’s been pushing this theory since at least 2015 when he told Stephen Colbert that Mars was a “fixer-upper” and that we could fix it by nuking it. According to scientists, he’s mostly wrong. NASA research indicates that dropping nuclear weapons on Mars will release some carbon dioxide, but not enough to alter conditions so they’re remotely close to what we have on Earth....