In the last decade, cloud computing has grown exponentially. It has become such a huge part of our lives that it’s almost become unnoticeable. But, if you’ve used Google Drive, shared photos with friends or even watched a movie on Netflix this week — then you’ve been making the most of this technology. In fact, cloud computing really came into its own over the last two years during the Covid-19 pandemic....
By the end of the decade, it might be commonplace to fly from New York to London in just three hours. A run from San Francisco to Tokyo would take just over four hours. Those are the claims by Boom Supersonic, a company contracted to build a fleet of supersonic jets for United that could be in service by 2029. Even with pandemics and flight delays, the world continues to get smaller....
While the huge compute costs and scarcity of text-to-video datasets have stunted the technique’s growth, recent research has brought the promise closer to reality. A computer artist called Glenn Marshall has given a glimpse at the potential. The Belfast-based composer recently won the Jury Award at the Cannes Short Film Festival for his AI film The Crow. Marshall had previously earned plaudits for an AI-generated Daft Punk video, but he applied a different approach to The Crow....
If you’re on the job hunt right now, everyone feels for you. It’s definitely not a fun place to be and the search is often about as stressful as life gets. Considering what’s at stake in the search for a new job or even a new career, it’s up to each and every job applicant to challenge themselves to put their absolute best foot forward. And you need to understand that that first impression these days is probably being assessed only by a software package....
The company said it’s not just assembling phones in Africa, but also handling the entire manufacturing process from making motherboards to packing in the new factory. The Mara X and the Mara Z are Android-based mid-ranged phones priced 175,750 Rwandan francs ($190) and 120,250 Rwandan francs ($130) respectively. Comparatively, there are plenty of sub-$100 phones from Samsung, Techno, and Huawei available in the country. — Mara Phones (@MaraPhones) October 8, 2019 Ashish Thakkar, CEO of Mara Group, said the company is targeting premium customers as of now to offer quality products....
Parents had a tough enough time regulating what their kids saw and heard back in the 80s and 90s, back when Skinemax and suggestive song lyrics were at the forefront of a vigilant parent’s worries. But those concerns seem quaint when stacked against what parents face today. Now that Mom and Dad have decided a kid needs a phone for their own safety, they have to grapple with that kid’s constant access to the web, where literally everything is available 24/7/365....
Just last month, the 26-year-old started a new Instagram project — dubbed Camxatca (it’s pronounced like the Russian peninsula) — that aims to document a series of film cameras and showcase a beautiful feed of analog photography. The concept is pretty simple. Each entry starts with an illustration of a camera (usually drawn by Ortiz himself), accompanied by a sentimentally curated gallery of images taken with it, all snapped by the same photographer....
One industrious researcher took it upon themselves to feed a recurrent neural network with 10,000 dick doodles in order to teach it how to draw the human phallus — and the result is equally glorious and abhorrent. Dick RNN is like any other web-based sketching board, with one simple exception — it will take any shape you draw on it, and try to turn it into a pecker. The neural network was fed a healthy diet of 10,000 tallywhacker doodles to acquire this impressive skill....
Tiziana Life Sciences, which trades under the $TLSA ticker, reportedly has no sales and just one analyst covering the company. Still, armed with a handful of press releases announcing partnerships with largely unknown biotech plays, its stock has somehow jumped from $2.80 to almost $11. [Watch Tesla’s meteoric rise — set to techno-remixed Elon Musk tweets] According to the company’s latest financial statements, it’s a loss-making venture without any revenue streams....
But it seems that, as is often the case with summer hot spells, the heatwave is ending with some spectacular thunderstorms. Tragically, downpours in Scotland are even thought to have played a part in a landslide that derailed a train – although it is still too early to say for sure. At the time of writing, the forecast shows scattered thunderstorms are possible everywhere leading up to the weekend. While parts of the UK have endured nearly a week of stifling heat, much of the country now faces hail, lightning, gusty winds, torrential downpours, and flooding....
Even something as seemingly simple and routine as a Google search represents one of AI’s most successful examples, capable of searching vastly more information at a vastly greater rate than humanly possible and consistently providing results that are (at least most of the time) exactly what you were looking for. The problem with all of these AI examples, though, is that the artificial intelligence on display is not really all that intelligent....
Released at the start of a global pandemic and lockdown — a time when people are rightly stressed and worried — the calming nature of Animal Crossing: New Horizons has hit a cultural nerve. In a good way. But, if you scratch beneath the surface of this idyllic seeming lifestyle simulation, there’s a darkness at its heart, and it goes by the name of Tom Nook. We’ve already covered how this raccoon (and yes, in the West, he’s a goddamn raccoon) is a misogynist and tyrant, but new “data” has revealed just how bad this situation really is....
By that math it would seem like incredibly poor judgment if a candidate were to intentionally disrespect a group of people representing as much as 20% of the US adult voting population. Enter the 45th president of the United States of America, Donald Trump. Despite his numerous social media bans, the twice-impeached former US president’s been making the rounds on popular media over his bombastic comments as of late. We reported on his mind-bogglingly odd confession yesterday when he admitted that he chose not to regulate Facebook and Twitter while in office because Mark Zuckerberg was nice to him....
With Uber Direct, drivers can now deliver items from non-food stores — it’s essentially an expansion of UberEat’s expansion into groceries. Uber offers as an example pet food and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, and I can imagine several other use cases of things you want but might not necessarily consider worth leaving the house for. Read: Apple and Google team up to build a coronavirus tracking system Uber Connect is more of a short-distance courier service, with which users can send packages to family and friends with same-day delivery....
So how can we make aviation sustainable? According to studies by the UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), aviation can achieve the net-zero 2050 target through the development of both sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and green liquid hydrogen technologies. They also highlight that green liquid hydrogen is the optimum fuel for the first generation of zero-emission aircraft. As per the ATI, targeted investment in the technology could help the UK grow its market share in civil aerospace from 12% today to 19% by 2050....
The judgment stems from a complaint by Cardiff resident Ed Bridges, who said police had scanned his face while he was Christmas shopping, and again when he was at a protest. Bridges argued that South Wales Police (SWP) had breached his right to privacy, as well as equality and data protection laws. But last September, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled against him, claiming cops had followed the relevant rules and met the requirements of the Human Rights Act....
Motorway service station operators are saying Britain’s electricity network isn’t up to the standard required for electric vehicle (EV) charging, the Financial Times reports. When it comes to the rollout of charging points, it seems it’s creating a bit of a roadblock. Despite efforts to add EV charging points, RoadChef, one of the country’s top three motorway service station operators, isn’t able to move forward as planned. Its EV charging point plans have largely been held up by local electricity grid operators (DNOs)....
UK start-up Urban-Air Port (UAP) has announced plans to establish 200 hubs for flying taxis and cargo drones across 65 cities globally over the next five years. The firm is set to launch its first ‘vertiport’, dubbed the “worlds smallest airport”, in Coventry in April, and says a “significant investment” from Hyundai Motor Group’s urban air division Supernal will enable expansion to further sites. “We have a variety of locations identified with our clients, customers and strategic partners – these will be announced in the weeks and months ahead, both across the UK and around the world,” Ricky Sandhu, Founder and Executive Chairman of UAP, told Cities Today....
It could also help researcher better understand the formation of heavy elements, such as iron, as well as providing a look at one of the great mysteries of the Universe — dark energy. “The UV flash is telling us something very specific about how this white dwarf exploded. As time passes, the exploded material moves farther away from the source. As that material thins, we can see deeper and deeper....
These are dark days for democracy. It hardly feels like the time to address anything other than the brutal murder of George Floyd and the ongoing horrors occurring in the US, but the COVID-19 pandemic is no less dangerous today than it was a week ago. In fact, the selfish actions of impeached US President Donald Trump have surely exacerbated the pandemic and arrested the science and technology world’s ability to address the virus at the epicenter of infection: the US....
