I was at a meeting when the discovery of ʻOumuamua was announced, and a friend immediately said to me, “So how long before somebody claims it’s a spaceship?” It seems that whenever astronomers discover anything unusual, somebody claims it must be aliens. Nearly all scientists believe that ʻOumuamua probably originates from outside the solar system. It is an asteroid- or comet-like object that has left another star and traveled through interstellar space – we saw it as it zipped by us....

TWIML’s Solutions Guide consists of several infographics and a litany of research and information meant to make the search for just the right ML solution easy. Per TWIML’s website: Up front: It can be difficulty to dispel vendor hype and get to the meat of a product in the AI world. Not only do enterprises and IT staff have to account for their business’ unique needs, but they have to deal with slick marketing teams and eager sales staffs who’re often more interested in selling you a product than ensuring you’ve got the right solution for your needs....

If that’s not incentive to abandon a boring news piece, we’re not sure what is. A team of researchers from Australia recently published a new take on Wigner’s Friend that’s pretty mind-blowing. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic: this might be the most exciting quantum physics theory since Schrodinger’s Cat. Wigner’s Friend is a theory posited by Eugene Wigner in 1961. A really dumbed-down version of it goes like this: Wigner and his friend decide to do an experiment at a quantum physics laboratory....

It’s a crazy world out there. Between fires, tornados, storms, and just good old fashioned power outages, there are a whole bunch of ways your power could go down and stay down for a while. And after suffering outages that affected more than 75 percent of the state and left thousands in freezing cold darkness for days last February, Texas is now warning residents to be prepared for the possibility of similar outages this winter....

In a new video, the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) showcased an automatic footstep planning system for Boston Dynamics’ Atlas and NASA’s Valkyrie robots. The method uses the machines’ sensors to work out the most efficient path to a human-selected location. It also works on rough and narrow terrains. Previously, the IHMC relied on a manual method that required a human operator to place the desired footsteps in a special user interface....

Audius was not the obvious choice for partnering with the short video giant. A digital music streaming startup founded in 2018, it isn’t one of the major streaming services such as Apple Music or Spotify. And, even more unusual, Audius is one of the first and only streaming platforms run on blockchain. Remind me, what is blockchain? Blockchain is a technology that stores data records and transfers values with no centralized ownership....

But with two full days of sessions, covering twelve different themes, you may be feeling overwhelmed. Not to worry, we’ve made a shortlist of some of the coolest upcoming sessions you should not miss. Scaling your health/AI business (October 1, 11:30-12 CET) The experience of the last few months has brought the health tech industry forward at lightning speed. While red tape and budgets were once barriers preventing the adoption of new tech solutions, since the onset of COVID-19 and social distancing measures, healthcare providers have been experimenting with everything from telehealth to blockchain-backed contact-tracing apps....

Here’s how this feature works on the bird site: If you have bought or minted an NFT on an Etherum-based marketplace, you can set it as your profile picture, and it’ll show up in the hexagonal shape. Tap on the tweet below to see the hex avatar on the Twitter app or website. You asked (a lot), so we made it. Now rolling out in Labs: NFT Profile Pictures on iOS pic....

These prompts helped decrease Quote Tweets of misleading information by 29% so we’re expanding them to show when you tap to like a labeled Tweet. pic.twitter.com/WTK164nMfZ — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 23, 2020 Previously, the company had applied such labels when users try to retweet disputed information or, say, an article they haven’t actually read. These moves were effective in reducing the spread of misleading information by 29%, according to Twitter, so it’s clear the labels do make a difference....

So if you have more than 600 followers, you can host a Spaces session on Twitter’s iOS or Android app. But no matter how many followers you have, you can still tune in to different live conversations, and get a chance to speak if the moderators of a Space invite you to do so. The company’s reasoning behind opening up Spaces to folks with this specific follower count is that their sessions might have a bit more traction than users with a lower follower count: Twitter launched Spaces in a test phase last year, and gradually opened it up to more users....

According to Twitter’s blog, the company has allowed tweets from public figures to remain up, even if they are clearly in violation of Twitter’s terms of service. That’s not new — but it’s apparently decided that such tweets should be both clearly marked, and partially hidden (which feels like an oxymoron). The violating tweets will now come with a label marking them as such — you can see an example in the picture above....

Problem is, many drivers don’t want animals in their cars, whether for cleanliness or allergies. Now it seems Uber wants to make traveling with your fur baby easier for a few extra bucks. The company is testing a feature called Uber Pet that lets you hail a fur-friendly driver right from the app for an extra $3 to $5. Currently, Uber wants you to call a driver beforehand to ask if you can bring a pet along, something you can only do after requesting a ride....

It was shaping up to be a fight between David (the drivers and lawmakers) and Goliath (Uber). At the time, I professed that David was yet to find his projectile, but now, I’m questioning whether he’ll need one at all to force Uber to change how it treats its drivers. Since writing that article, I had a number of Uber drivers contact me directly to describe the torrid time they’re having....

From 2035, UK car buyers will only be able to buy electric vehicles (EVs), What Car? reports. Originally pegged for 2040, the bank has been brought forward after experts said the UK wouldn’t hit its 2050 emissions targets unless it brought the ban forward. Let’s put that in some context: By 2035 new car sales in the UK will be 100-percent electric. According to What Car?, just 1.6 percent of new cars sold in the UK are electric....

According to scheme guidance published late yesterday, the UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) is fast-tracking and expanding the nation’s trials of e-scooter services in an attempt to prompt a safe and “green” restart to local travel as coronavirus lockdown measures are lifted. It also hopes the services will ease public transport demand. [Read: Chinese EV maker Xpeng starts shipping its hotly anticipated Tesla Model 3 rival] This means that e-scooters might start cropping up on UK streets as early as next week....

Micromobility firm TIER has announced a new partnership that gives ageing electric lithium batteries a second life. Partnering with German start-up Vertical Values, the firm will repair and upcycle defective batteries from electric scooters and assemble still-useable cells into new batteries. Lithium batteries are prime targets for upcycling as they are typically decommissioned from their first life when they start to fall short of their promised range — despite still holding 70-80 percent of their original charge....

Planetary scientists like me have long known that Venus has a plethora of tectonic landforms. Some of these formations are long, thin belts where the crust has been pushed together to form ridges or pulled apart to form troughs and grooves. In many of these belts there’s evidence that pieces of the crust have moved side to side, too. Our new study shows, for the first time, that these bands of ridges and troughs often mark the boundaries of flat, low-lying areas that themselves show relatively little deformation and are individual blocks of Venus’ crust that have shifted, rotated and slid past each other over time – and may have done so in the recent past....

The brainchild of Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner is getting a hot new feature with Vivaldi’s latest update — two-level stacked tabs. I’m excited about this as this makes navigating through groups much easier. Sure, it takes a bit more screen space, but I’m willing to give that up in exchange for a tidy-looking browser window. You can form a two-level tab stack by selecting multiple tabs. You’ll see all the tabs under the new group in another tab bar below the default one....

All the phones have similar screens and designs, except that the top-tier Pro+ sports a vegan leather back. While rear camera configurations differ in each model, the front camera remains the same. Let’s take a look at their detailed specifications. The X60 Pro+ Screen: 6.56-inch FHD+ AMOLED display Refresh rate: 120Hz Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 RAM: 12GB Rear camera: 50-megapixel main sensor with f/1.6 aperture (1/1.31-inch) + 48-megapixel ultrawide sensor with f/2....

Sitting in traffic jams or at red lights, which happens a lot with urban driving, is incredibly bad for your health. A study from the University of Surrey in 2016 found that, when stuck in a queue, pollution levels inside your car can increase by 40%. While most cars have some kind of air filtration system, they’re not created equal and can still let harmful particulate matter into the cabin....