— Xbox (@Xbox) May 7, 2020 The whole stream was done via webcam, as I suspect will become the norm until the need for social distancing wears off. The most amusing part, for me, was Xbox Games Marking head Aaron Greenberg’s background image, which was of a kitchen with a Series X console in place of a fridge. We’ve all heard (and made) the jokes about the console’s shape, but it’s nice to see Microsoft itself can take and make a joke at its new moneymaker’s expense....

and life returned to the world . . . It has been called —Oh that’s a beautiful shot. the most important picture of the 20th century. from: The Moon: A History for the Future by Oliver Morton “Earthrise, that iconic photograph snapped from the Apollo 8 space capsule 50 years ago on a Christmas-eve orbit around the Moon, forced a self-absorbed species to reflect on its fragility. “Prior to that image, people had a perception of the planet being essentially infinite in its capacity to take all the damage we dish out,” recalls John Amos....

In fact, there’s also a lot of confusion surrounding what AI really is. Marketing departments have a tendency to somehow fit AI in their messaging and rebrand old products as “AI and machine learning.” The box office is filled with movies about sentient AI systems and killer robots that plan to conquer the universe. Meanwhile, social media is filled with examples of AI systems making stupid (and sometimes offending) mistakes....

The reason is some unknown bug in the latest update of Android WebView, a component that lets developers show webpages in their apps. In a statement, Google has said it was aware of the issue and working on a patch: Meanwhile, folks on Reddit and Twitter — including Samsung’s official account — have suggested a couple of ways to make your apps work for now. Here’s how you can fix this problem:...

You’ve likely run into this claim from tech giants before: “We do not sell your personal data.” Companies from Facebook to Google to Twitter repeat versions of this statement in their privacy policies, public statements, and congressional testimony. And when taken very literally, the promise is true: Despite gathering masses of personal data on their users and converting that data into billions of dollars in profits, these tech giants do not directly sell their users’ information the same way data brokers directly sell data in bulk to advertisers....

Perhaps it’s a bit more nuanced than that though. Maybe he’s only half-wrong – or half-right, depending on your philosophical view. What if we are living in a simulation, but there’s no computer (in the traditional sense) running it? Here’s the wackiest, most improbable theory I could cobble together from the weirdest papers I’ve ever covered. I call it: “Simulation Argument: Live and Unplugged.” Philosophy! Bostrom’s hypothesis is actually quite complicated:...

Yet the promised arrival of self-driving cars has not progressed beyond the testing stage. And in one test drive of an Uber self-driving car in 2018, a pedestrian was killed by the vehicle. Although these accidents happen every day when humans are behind the wheel, the public holds driverless cars to far higher safety standards, interpreting one-off accidents as proof that these vehicles are too unsafe to unleash on public roads....

How does this work? Finnish startup Polar Night Energy has developed a novel way to store heat. A 4×7 meter steel container is filled with hundreds of tonnes of sand. The sand is then heated with wind or solar energy, and stored for use by a local energy provider to heat the local district. It’s effectively a giant sand battery. Why sand? While wind and solar energy are extremely useful, they only offer intermittent power....

That’s why I got curious when I came across Juraj Holub, the Chief Meeting Designer at Slido. Was this yet another case of a fluffed-up startup jargon title? What does someone in that role do all day? Are they taken seriously at all? With all of these questions racing around in my head, I reached out to Holub to get to the bottom of this. Now, to be honest, the first idea that came to mind when I heard ‘Chief Meeting Designer’ was pretty ridiculous....

Though WhatsApp offers a Business app and API to help companies more easily communicate with customers, the company says using these tools to send out bulk or automated messages is against its Terms of Service. WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, but the company can still identify abuse to some degree using unencrypted information – such as profile photos or user reports – and AI. The company says it’s stopped “millions of abusive accounts” from running on its service....

If you know English and Spanish, you’re in a much better position to understand, communicate with, and get to know many more people than if you only knew one or the other. By that same token, learning a variety of coding languages can open you up to a broadening universe of possibilities. Knowing more than one coding discipline improves your odds of finding a solution to a programming problem. But maybe more importantly, learning several coding languages can put you in line for even more programming jobs, maximizing your chances to work on projects you enjoy — with an increased paycheck to prove it....

Here’s a hot take: All AI is military AI. Let’s start with the study. You can read it here, but to briefly sum up, the authors write: The researchers at CSET had a near-impossible job set out before them. The public discourse on China’s spending is largely based on speculation. As you can imagine, the PRC doesn’t release information about its government spending. CSET takes great pains – over dozens of paragraphs – to point out that there isn’t enough data available on China’s AI spending to come to any real conclusions....

The company Dutch Railways (also known as NS) is constantly innovating to keep its spot in the global top three. By providing digital services such as mobile check-in, seat search, and fixed reservations ‘public transport bicycles,’ the company hopes to welcome an even higher number of Dutch train travelers in the future. Mobile and API first To bring these apps and systems to life, NS follows a mobile and API first philosophy....

Unfortunately, this is still just a dream. Of course there are loads of infrastructural and economic hurdles in the way, but there’s an even more fundamental issue that’s stopping us from super-fast charging our mainstream lithium-ion batteries: chemistry. It’s been already tested that fast charging your EV speeds up battery degradation. But why exactly? In a new research conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, scientists have focused on the chemical behavior of the battery’s anode (the negative terminal), during the battery’s charge and discharge — and they’ve discovered some interesting stuff....

That’s exactly what Ukrainian President and onetime actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy did on Feb. 25, 2022, in a selfie-style video viewed 3 million times within an hour – part of an effort to mobilize international opinion against the Russian invasion of his country. And it appears to be working. The comedian-turned-politician is credited with convincing European leaders to take actions considered unthinkable just a week ago, such as Germany sending weapons directly to Ukraine....

Wikimedia, the organization managing Wikipedia, said that it had kept the site stuck with the current site design all this while to avoid overwhelming users with features. Now, it wants to modernize the interface while “keeping its core identity.” New features will include a reconfigurable logo, a collapsible sidebar, search improvements, language switching links, and a redesigned table of contents for each article. Wikimedia is rolling out the collapsible sidebar the first; this usually hosts links to random articles, language switching, and canonical translation....

Last year, cyber security company Kaspersky detected nearly 3.5 million malicious attacks on mobile phone users. The spam messages we get on our phones via text message or email will often contain links to viruses, which are a type of malicious software (malware). There’s a decent chance that at some point you’ve installed malware that infected your phone and worked (without you noticing) in the background. According to a global report commissioned by private company Zimperium, more than one-fifth of mobile devices have encountered malware....

Firefox Preview has been built from the ground up using Mozilla’s own GeckoView rendering engine and will ultimately replace the current Firefox for Android mobile app “this fall.” The pilot version promises to be twice as fast as the last stable version and also brings Firefox’s tracking protection, which is on by default. GeckoView already powers its privacy-focused mobile browser Firefox Focus, but Mozilla is pausing development on that app to focus all its efforts and resources on GeckoView....

The City of Zurich and transit operator Zurich Public Transport (VBZ) have partnered with mobility firm ViaVan to launch the city’s first on-demand public transport service, Pikmi. The 18-month pilot will see ViaVan provide on-demand shared services from 8pm to midnight, Monday-Sunday, to fill current gaps in public transport provision. Passengers can book rides through the Pikmi app and pay by presenting a valid public transport ticket (which can be bought at kiosks or online through the VBZ app) to the driver....

“Coronavirus is the black swan of 2020,” said Sequoia in a letter to founders and CEOs published to its Medium blog Thursday evening. “Black swans” are rare, unexpected events that heavily influence global activity. Often-cited examples include the advent of the personal computer, the internet, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. “[…] With lives at risk, we hope that conditions improve as quickly as possible. In the interim, we should brace ourselves for turbulence and have a prepared mindset for the scenarios that may play out....