Up front: I’ve got “extragalactic planetary, planetary extragalactic” to the tune of the Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic” stuck in my head. And, now, you probably do too. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way: An extragalactic planet is one that’s not only outside of our own solar system, such as the thousands we’ve found floating around the Milky Way, but also outside of our own galaxy. In this case, the team thinks they’ve found a Saturn-sized planet in the far off galaxy called Messier 51 (M51)....

That’s the question a trio of researchers recently tackled in a paper titled “Intelligence as a planetary scale process.” AKA: the “By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet” theory, as we like to call it here at Neural. This one’s a bit of a doozy. The paper itself is intriguing, but my first instinct was to call it ironically boring and painfully optimistic. Here’s a snippet from the abstract: Anybody else getting “Dune” vibes?...

A team of researchers working out of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC recently conducted a detailed study of one our galaxy’s nearby neighbors, a galactic conglomerate called the Ophiuchus cluster. What’s interesting about this particular cluster is that it has a donut-shaped “crater” in it. When scientists discovered the anomaly in 2016 they initially theorized that the crater could be the result of a projection from a black hole....

Abracadabra, you don’t really exist. Up front: The big idea in play here is called “quantum advantage.” Typically we hear about this in the world of quantum computing. There, quantum advantage is the hypothetical point at which a quantum computer can outperform any existing classical computer at a given task. Outside of quantum computing, quantum advantage is used to describe a situation where the exploitation of quantum mechanics allows a person or system to outperform a person or system using a classical equivalent....

The former head of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, called for the reinstatement of Pluto’s planetary status back in 2019, citing that “it’s the way I learned it, and I’m committed to it.” — Cory Reppenhagen (@CReppWx) August 23, 2019 Well, Jim, you may just get your wish and a whole lot more. If you enjoyed learning about the nine planets in our solar system, you’re going to absolutely flip your lid over what could happen next....

I say it’s making a comeback, but in truth, Segway never really went away. Following an acquisition by Chinese robotics firm Ninebot back in 2015, the company is now known as Segway-Ninebot — for the sake of ease, I still call it Segway. It no longer makes its eponymous self-balancing stand-on personal transportation devices. Instead, it is now pivoting to more understandable and accepted forms of mobility, like electric scooters....

In a time of enforced solitude and social distancing, there’s no better time than now to try streaming services, especially ones you might not otherwise try. But we also get that you’re not made of money. Luckily, almost every streaming service out there offers a free trial. So here are all the trial periods for the major streaming services. For the most part, every single trial period is somewhere between a week and a month....

Okay, so $899 may not be that cheap to the average person, but within Sonus Faber’s typical audience, it’s pretty much a bargain. Moreover, the company appears to have sacrificed little on the design front in order to achieve the price point, at least from what can be gleaned from the press release and promotional images. Notably, the speakers come with a front panel made of ‘multilayer wood,’ a decidedly more premium material than the usual plastic veneer you’d see at this front point....

The new addition is attached to the Dualshock via the port on the bottom of the controller. The paddles can be mapped with up to 16 actions from elsewhere on the controller, such as Triangle or RI. The round OLED display tells you what each button is mapped to at that moment. Pushing on the lower part of the screen apparently allows you to remap the buttons as you see fit....

Since Spotify launched in India last year, one of the major gripes listeners had was the absence of major artists such as Coldplay, Linkin Park, Led Zeppelin, and Ed Sheeran. Now, the streaming service has signed a new global licensing deal with Warner Music Group (WMG) that allows users in India to access music from artists under this conglomerate’s labels, including the ones mentioned above. These songs aren’t available on Spotify India right now, but it shouldn’t be a long wait as they’re already available on the streaming service in some other countries....

Now, Twitter is testing a way to share tweets directly to Instagram. The company announced last night that it’s rolling out this feature to its iOS app for now. When you’ll hit the share button under a tweet, you’ll see the Instagram Stories option pop up. -management pic.twitter.com/wpjnElsRTK — Twitter (@Twitter) June 22, 2021 This feature gets you out of the hassle of taking screenshots and posting them on Instagram....

Let’s start with the battery packs. According to a Business Insider exclusive, Tesla reportedly shipped 2012 edition Model S’ with battery packs that had leaky cooling systems, which could in some extreme cases lead to fires. The report chronicles how the EV maker knew that its battery packs weren’t up to par and, despite employee concerns, continued to plow on with production anyway. [Read: The Segway is no more. Bachelor parties of the world, pour one out] The problem is with an aluminum connector that affixes to the end of the battery’s cooling matrix....

Published in Science Advances, the team’s paper entitled “A pebble accretion model for the formation of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System,” lays out and attempts to validate a theory that planets are formed by tiny, millimeter-sized pebbles massing together over time. According to the researchers: The big idea here involves ice pebbles being present at the earliest formations of planets. The scientists believe Earth, Mars, and Venus were formed this way and project we’ll find the same scenario in most other exoplanets....

Microsoft says it’s the most powerful Surface ever, but the device simply isn’t going to provide you with the performance per dollar you’d get from some traditional laptop Windows competitors, let alone Apple’s MacBooks and their overpowered ARM chips or gaming PC’s with mega-powerful GPUs. There’s not much sense in comparing it to a boring regular laptop, because this isn’t a boring regular laptop. Instead, the Surface Laptop Studio is the most versatile PC ever made....

SEBA, the Swiss-based cryptocurrency bank, is now officially operational, The Block reports. The bank reportedly shared a statement with The Block yesterday that said its Swiss clients can now open accounts with the bank. This goes for corporate businesses, asset managers, and professional private investors. Launched earlier this year, the bank received its banking license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) in August. SEBA says it’s trying to bridge the gap between traditional and digital assets, whilst maintaining high levels of security....

The Asian nation will invest a little over €10 million ($9.98 million) towards chip production in the Baltic country, the head of the Taiwanese representative office in Vilnius said on Monday. As Reuters reports, Taiwan’s Industrial Technology and Research Institute (ITRI) will work together with Lithuania’s electronics manufacturer Teltonika to develop semiconductor technology, while more than a dozen Taiwanese scholarships will be offered to Lithuanians for training purposes. According to Eric Huang — head of the representative office — the €10 million investment will be finalized by early next year....

Gunton’s mother and father have each been served suspended prison sentences for transferring their son’s ill-gotten cryptocurrency during the authorities’ investigation, Eastern Daily Press reports. A hardware wallet was seized by police when Gunton was arrested in June 2018. It was not initially accessible but the perpetrator provided the 24-word seed phrase a few months later in September. According to the report, the authorities were keeping tabs on Gunton’s internet-enabled devices, which led investigating officers to suspect that something wasn’t as it should be....

Well that sounds pretty boring, but trust me, it gets better. There was one special and utterly unexpected guest who joined the meeting from far-off Texas… Elon Musk. Yep, you read that right. In fact it was Volkswagen’s CEO Herbert Diess himself who invited Musk to join the meeting via video call. Turning your enemy into a friend?! As participants of the conference reported to the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Diess lectured vigorously about why he considers Tesla alone to be Volkswagen’s greatest challenger....

On a shareholder earnings call in January Musk urged the public to “wait until Battery Day” to have their minds “blown.” However, on Battery Day Eve, Musk tempered expectations with a series of tweets that suggested nothing big was really coming until 2022. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 21, 2020 Following the tweets, Tesla’s stock price acted appropriately and headed south, a trend which has seemingly continued, even following Musk’s Battery Day announcements....

Last Friday, the BBC wrote that about 500 users reported an error on the Tesla app at around 4:40 ET (10:40 CET) that left car owners unable to unlock the doors or start their cars. Since the company has no PR team (Elon sacked them), it was Elon Musk to the rescue. So he went on Twitter to keep stranded drivers updated. I’m glad he was able to take a break from tweeting about the acronym for his Texas Institute of Technology & Science to help those poor souls....