With all the chatter around hyped web3 projects everywhere you look — from metaverses to NFT marketplaces — it got me thinking: how many cryptocurrencies exist right now? You might already know that besides the OGs Bitcoin and Ether, several more currencies exist. There’s not a definitive number, but here are some figures worth considering: Coinbase, one of the biggest exchanges, currently tracks 9,494 currencies. CoinMarketCap (CMC), a cryptocurrency price tracking website, shows on top that there are 17,543 cryptocurrencies out there, but lists 9,358 on its index....

In the past, people may have stumbled upon good blogs via blogrolls or accidentally googling the right keywords but today lot of people rely on social networks to find new articles and blogs. And while you may have some dedicated fans that read every word you write, not everyone of your readers may show such passion for your blog and visit everyday. So how do you keep those people coming back too?...

It almost felt like common knowledge that software was increasingly expensive. Yet was it, really? Had the move from boxed software and one-time licenses to subscriptions and SaaS had actually resulted in higher prices, we wondered? So last year we picked 100 popular business software, dug through blog posts and the invaluable Wayback Machine, checked each year’s pricing for the decade from 2009 to 2019, and calculated the software inflation rate....

Under the username of thegentlemetre, the bot had been churning out a post per minute on /r/AskReddit, a sub with more than 30 million users. That behavior raised the suspicions of writer Philip Winston. “I read through some of the posts and they reminded me of text I’d seen from OpenAI’s language model GPT-3,” Winston wrote on his blog. Winston shared his theory on the subreddit /r/GPT3. Another Redditor named Wiskkey noticed that the structure of its writing was similar to that used by the Philosopher AI, a controversial text generator powered by GPT-3....

Unsurprisingly named the VR2 (come on, what else did you expect from the company that brought you the PlayStation 5?), the hardware has been unveiled at an interesting time. Not only is there a renewed interest in virtual reality tech (thanks, Meta), but it’s also arriving into a market that has significantly evolved in recent years. In fact, the VR2 serves as an interesting marker to show how the entire sector has changed....

To be clear, it’s actually hosting a couple of smaller events this year. In May, it’s hosting a Conversations event that’s all about business messaging. And later in October, it’s going to have a Connect event, and that will be all things metaverse. In its official statement, the company said this is a break from its usual schedule; it makes me unsure about whether we’ll see an F8 event in the next few years....

The streaming service is in the process of rolling out a new feature that displays the lyrics of a song as it plays, sort of like karaoke but without the drowned out vocals. There’s one catch, though: it appears that so far the functionality is only available to a limited number of users, according to AndroidPolice. If you’re not one of the lucky ones, here’s what the feature looks like:...

The Top chart will feature the 200 most popular podcasts in a region, and will also let users discover new content by category — like tech, true crime, or health. For the time being, browsing by category will be available only in “certain markets,” including Brazil, Australia, Germany, Mexico, Sweden, the UK, and the US. It’s also worth noting the Top chart will be localized to your region. The Trending chart, on the other hand, will display the top 50 fastest-growing podcasts in your region....

Last night, the streaming company announced a tool that allows artists to get more ‘reach’ in exchange for lower royalty rates. Spotify says artists or record labels can choose the songs they want to promote: The streaming company will boost these songs in relevant automatically generated radios. It said that if more people are listening to these songs, it’ll keep boosting them, otherwise they’ll be pulled back from the promotion....

When the algorithms detect changes in heart rate or temperature that indicate the body’s fighting an infection, the device will instantly send the user an alert. Stanford professor Michael Snyder estimates that wearables make at least 250,00 measurements per day, which he plans to forage for signals that someone’s sick. “My lab wants to harness that data and see if we can identify who’s becoming ill as early as possible — potentially before they even know they’re sick,” he said....

Granted, the Star Wars franchise rouses several generations of fanpeople like no franchise on earth — and given the trailer begins with a sizzle reel of major events from the previous two trilogies, it’s likely Disney is deliberately trying to tickle that nostalgic nerve. In addition to the old footage, Disney also revealed new scenes from the film. These include dramatic shots of spaceships framed by thunder and lightning, planetary destruction, and yet another confrontation between Force-sensitive foundling Rey and the eternally-conflicted Kylo Ren....

It was just after lunch, and I had asked for a doggy bag for the extra dish I had ordered but not touched. We were walking back to the office when I noticed a homeless man asking for some money to buy food. I figured I probably wouldn’t eat it anyway, so I told my friend to wait for me so I could walk over to offer him my food....

To grab the deal, students need to sign up for the discounted plan of their choosing. It’s $4.99 a month for YouTube Music Premium, or $6.99 for YouTube Premium. Instead of the typical offer — one month free — however, they’ll now get three months. Once the trial expires, students will be billed at the normal subscription amount, unless they decide to opt out. YouTube Music Premium is essentially a paid streaming service, much like Spotify or Apple Music....

If you know what you’re doing, it’s a vital maintenance tool for your device. Well, Microsoft PowerShell is like a command prompt on steroids, a Microsoft-approved environment to access data stores, fix your registry, automate repetitive commands and more. Now, even programming newbs can wrap their heads around this powerful feature in this Microsoft PowerShell Certification Bundle. The package is on sale now at hundreds of dollars off the regular price, only $19 from TNW Deals....

Tesla stock opened the day at $356, and soon hit a low of $335.99 — down more than 32% since disclosing its “at-the-market” plan (a fancy term for fire sale) to the SEC on September 1. At the end of August, Tesla stock had returned 974% in one year, from $46.36 to $498.32. Of course, those figures take the company’s recent five-for-one stock split into account, a dog whistle to retail investors concerned with low per-share prices also utilized by Apple in late August....

The price is now up by over 50% in the first six weeks of 2021. Led by Elon Musk, Tesla’s investment is obviously in profit already: depending on the exact day of the purchase, it is likely to be worth over US$2 billion, pointing to a paper profit of over US$500 million. To put that in context, when the electric car-maker made its first-ever annual net profit in 2020, it was just over US$700 million....

While Poco shares a ton of resources with Xiaomi including software and manufacturing, it has tried hard to push a narrative that it’s an independent brand. But with its new phone, the Poco M2 pro, the firm is making that hard to believe. The $175 Poco M2 Pro is a new offering from the company, but it’s a love child of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro and the Note 9 Pro Max, I’ll tell you why, but let’s look at the specifications of the new device first....

Google Glass is the embodiment of a product ahead of its time. Few in the tech world doubt that augmented reality wearables will eventually be big, but if the world isn’t ready for them in 2019, it most definitely wasn’t back in 2014. Google Glass was an awesome concept, but the hardware was simply too sluggish, cumbersome, and creepy to ever catch on. Windows Phone Breaking into the smartphone market is notoriously difficult, even more so when you’re trying to create a new platform altogether....

In 1950 he asked, “Can machines think?”, and came up with a test that researchers still turn to as a way of judging whether a computer could be considered truly intelligent in the same way as humans. But, coming from an age where autonomous robots were only just in their infancy, the Turing Test was only designed to assess artificial brains, not a complete artificial person. Now that we have increasingly realistic looking androids, we need a 21st-century version of the test....

However, these rioters might find it difficult to land a date online, as Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and OkCupid are kicking them out. As The Washington Post reported, these dating apps are using images captured during the incident to identify miscreants and remove them from the platform. The report notes that users are also joining in to help the company and authorities out. A lot of them are swiping through profiles, and even matching with people who claim to be involved in the storming of the Capitol just to gather evidence....