You always knew you were smart. But did you know learning to play the piano could actually make you even smarter? It turns out that’s actually true. In a study of almost 4,700 volunteers, those who spent part of their COVID lockdown learning to play an instrument saw their intelligence increase by 10 percent. Now, nobody’s saying that enrolling in Skoove Premium Piano Lessons ($39.99 for 1-year subscription, 66 percent off from TNW Deals) will definitely make you a smarter person....

If you shift the focus to look at time spent online as a whole, the vast majority (96 percent) of activity already takes place outside search engines. Meanwhile, more time is being spent on social media, with the average user now spending 2 hours and 16 minutes on social each day — up by a minute from last year. And, as social platforms evolve to become less about conversation and more about entertainment, online consumer behavior is also shifting....

The service is free (albeit mostly ad-supported) and available to Sonos customers today. The feature is divided into a few main components: You can stream from over 60,000 radio stations around the world from partners like TuneIn and iHeartRadio, with more to come. The Sonos Sound System is the company’s “signature ad-free station,” curated and hosted by the Sonos Team, meant to highlight new releases in particular and delve behind the scenes into classics....

Just about every AI company trains their driverless vehicle algorithms using simulations. Until now, the simulators themselves weren’t all that interesting. They’re mostly just physics engines designed to be interpreted by a neural network. But Sony just unveiled the most popular autonomous driving simulator ever: Gran Turismo Sport. In case you’re not a gamer: this isn’t advanced software designed to train AIs, it’s a game. And not just any game but the latest in one of the most beloved racing simulation series in history Researchers from the University of Zurich and Sony AI Zurich recently published a pre-print paper showcasing the development of an autonomous agent designed to beat the best human players at the game....

But Squid Game’s global popularity sadly has a negative side: cybercriminals are ramping up their efforts to scam fans of the show. There are six games in the Squid Game, so we have selected for you the six most prominent related scams. Falling for them won’t cost you your life as in the show, but your money and your personal data will certainly be on the line. Red light, green light — let’s begin....

Intel’s not the first or only company to raise the alarm about this global crisis. In April, South Korean tech giant Samsung noted that this problem is hitting its smartphone and appliances business. The company said that it has to “rebalance” its production plans to manage its sales demands. Fellow Korean tech company LG has also voiced similar concerns. This seems like a serious problem. So let’s take a look at what’s causing it, and how it will impact you?...

I want to share some thoughts on two specific mindsets that I realized I’ve been oscillating between for most of my career. But here’s the funny part…I rarely noticed when I was switching between them. Looking back on it, had I realized this paradigm, I might have been able to save myself hours of thinking about the perfect solutions to problems. To give you an idea of the different stages of software development, I’ll give a bit of backstory to the project I’ve been working on....

What we view as objective reality – the idea that what we can observe, measure, and prove is real and those things we cannot are theoretical or imaginary – is actually a subjective reality that we either unravel, create, or dis-obfuscate by the simple act of observation. A smarter way of putting it can be found in the aforementioned study, “Experimental test of nonlocal causality” conducted by lead author Martin Ringbauer and an international team of physicists and researchers: The big idea here is that ‘local causality,’ a facet of classical science that breaks down events into cause and effect using observations and measurements that can be reproduced (ie, we can drop an apple a million times and, barring external interference beyond gravity, it will fall at the exact same trajectory and velocity every single time)....

More specifically, I urge you to try out GiftGenius, a handy AI concierge that claims to use the GPT-3 language model to recommend suitable gifts for everyone in your life. Simply describe a recipient with something like ‘my buddy from college who is 35, enjoys photography, and has a three-year-old son,’ and the bot will parse your query to come up with surprisingly decent suggestions. In this case, it spat out recommendations for camera-equipped drones for my friend to capture aerial photos and videos of his son, as well as DSLR lenses “to get better shots at sporting events or on family adventures,” and “A photo book of his sons first year To help him relive all the memories he has missed while at work or traveling for business (sic)....

I’m a micromobility enthusiast with a vision to improve city transport. In 2015 two friends and I launched an electric skateboard business. Despite our lobbying efforts, European policymakers ruled against skateboards. But what was bad for e-skateboards was good for e-scooters, as cities across the US and Europe embraced them as a potential last-mile solution. Through my lobbying efforts I had met with the Okai Berlin office. The more we talked the more I synched with Okai’s culture and vision....

The heart and soul of the Sweetwater enterprise, which spans numerous companies, isn’t its main earner Sweetwater Sound. It’s Sweetwater Studios. Sure, Sweetwater Sound had $725 million in revenue last year and there’s no reason to believe it won’t keep growing (compare that to $619 million in 2017). And it’s hands-down the world’s largest online music retailer. Yes, Sweetwater is an enterprise whose growth is driven by the profits of its sales-front....

Enter SwiftUI, which is Apple’s newest UI framework. SwiftUI is available across all of Apple’s menagerie of devices: phones, tablets, TV boxes, watches, and computers. It allows developers to create UI elements with an expressive, simple declarative syntax. Crucially, this can be done without writing mountains of code. — Jack Lawrence (@_jackhl) June 3, 2019 Demonstrating the framework on stage, Josh Shaffer, an Apple software developer, showed how a basic ‘Hello World’ iPhone app can be created with just six lines of code (and two of those were closing curly braces)....

According to the report, Apple recently told Apple Store Geniuses – its tech support staff – that replacement devices will be in short supply for “two to four weeks.” Geniuses were told they could offer loaners or let customers know they could be mailed new devices when they become available. The report also notes some stores have faced shortages of individual parts. An earlier report suggested Apple Stores were running on reduced iPad inventory too, but it’s worth noting that might be in part because Apple is expected to announce a new iPad Pro as soon as this month – the current announcement date is pegged at March 31....

The Curpertino-based company isn’t exactly known for left-field approaches to product design. It’s all about evolution, about tinkering and perfecting. This leads to clear aesthetic growth across its products. Well, in everything but the Apple Watch. Don’t believe me? Well, have a look at the Series 1, released all the way back in 2015: And now compare that to this year’s Series 6: They’re remarkably similar. The Side button is now flusher to the body, and the actual size of the Apple Watch has changed too (from 38mm and 42mm, to 40mm and 44mm)....

The Soltera weighs in at 18.5kg (41 lbs), which is very light by the usual ebike standards (in the US, at least, most ebikes this price range will weigh over 25 kg/55 lbs). Granted, it’s not quite as lightweight as some of recent ‘stealth’ ebikes — the Ride1Up Roadster and the Tenways C-GO 600 both weigh in at about 15kg (33 lbs) — but it’s still as light as even some ‘analog bikes’....

The Esports Awards have been around for a good few years now, but they’ve been hosted in London. But this year a change of venue was in order, and the event moved to the Esports Stadium in Arlington. I dusted off my good dress and a notepad and sallied forth. I’m sure, when most of you think of esports at all, you’re not necessarily associating it with Arlington, Texas. But the stadium there is the largest dedicated esports space in North America, and was built specifically to attract this sort of event....

But there’s more to the future of cars than just electric motors. The onset of fully autonomous vehicles may lie just beyond the technological horizon and the promise of a million-mile battery draws ever closer. In order to navigate the road to these technologies, European automakers are partnering with quantum computing companies at an increasing pace. The European automobile industry has a long, rich history of technological innovation. From its onset with the Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau in 1898 to the masterpiece that is the 2023 McLaren Artura, Europe’s place at the cutting edge of the industry has never been questioned....

Then, there were reports that a deadly virus was causing China to shut down. Then Italy. Then Europe. In just two short weeks, my colleagues and I were ordered into quarantine by local government leaders, and I was being asked to lead a company I had just joined, with a leadership team I had either never met before or had just met, through a historic downturn from the (dis)comfort of my home office....

Hola Pandemic Pals, I took a walk on the beach this morning before work. Everyone has a story about what they were going to do in 2020 if COVID-19 hadn’t shown up. Back in late January, when things started going sour, the year was young and full of potential. We moved to a bungalow right on the beach at the end of February. For a few brief weeks the entire Pacific Ocean was our front yard....

In the weeks since, the metaverse has become the hottest topic in tech. The last time I saw a planet-scale conversation about technology of this magnitude was when blockchain and cryptocurrency entered the mainstream periphery around the middle of 2017. Unfortunately, it seems like most people don’t “get” the metaverse. It’s being referred to as a VR/AR/MR technology or as a marketplace for digital goods and NFTs. While those things are true, calling the metaverse a VR tech is like calling the combustion engine a WWII British submarine technology....