There used to be a time when Beats headphones deserved their awful reputation — believe me, I actually owned a pair. Yes, these were the days before the company was bought by Apple and it released stylish, but terrible-sounding cans. The pair I had pumped out sound that was overwhelmed by bass, but still somehow flat audio. It put me off the brand for ages. Thankfully, things have changed. Since the company’s aforementioned purchase, Beats’ audio quality has improved drastically....

Have you been using tech for more than five years? I’d put a lot of money on that being most of us. If that’s the case, then I know something you’ve experienced: data loss. Now, I don’t necessarily mean forgetting to save a file, or accidentally deleting something, I’m talking about a huge range of your digital things just… no longer existing. Old photographs are a prime example. From what I can tell, every picture I had before I got an iPhone (and by extension, iCloud) is gone....

Ahh, December. On one hand, it’s a terrible month. It’s cold, it’s dark, it rains all the fucking time — it’s pretty grim when you think about it. But, on the other, it’s glorious. There’s a festive cheer in the air, holidays are on the horizon, and people actually seem to want to meet up and have fun. And then you have the indulgences. My god, the indulgences. The drink flows....

The firm is introducing new ways to share audio from rooms with new features called Clips and Replay. Clips, as the self-explanatory name suggests, will enable you to share 30-second snippets of ongoing rooms on social media. Until now, if you wanted a friend to join in a room, you had to share a link and tell them what’s it about. But now, you’ll be able to share a small preview of the discussion that’s going on....

Experience really is our best teacher. And for IT experts, there’s no substitute for training that goes right to the heart of what it means to oversee a modern, sophisticated digital information system. Of course, proving that experience and mastered training is another story. In that case, it’s all about having the right certification of your talents. In tech, that means a seal of approval from CompTIA, which you can attain with the background offered in The Complete 2020 CompTIA Certification Training Bundle....

Part of the reason he defined it as such is because the peak that the UK has passed is, in many senses, artificial – a result of the stringent lockdown measures citizens have been forced to endure for the last month. This is not the same peak from the “flatten the curve” rhetoric of early government briefings. The aim of flattening the curve seemed to be to allow the disease to spread through the population slowly enough that, eventually, a large proportion of people in the country would have had the disease, while the peak demand on the health service was kept at a manageable level....

In 2030, the sale of new diesel and petrol passenger cars will be outlawed in the UK. The future of passenger motoring will be electric. But recent problems supplying parts and the high carbon cost of manufacturing electric vehicles could delay the climate benefits of this transition. To make best use of existing petrol and diesel burning vehicles – and the carbon that was invested in creating them – drivers and manufacturers can reduce the emissions of a family of compounds called nitrogen oxides, which are linked to respiratory diseases, through better treatment of exhaust fumes....

Up front: This one gets a very respectful hard-disagree from me. While I do believe that quantum computing does pose an existential threat to humanity, my reasons differ wildly from those proposed by Wadhwa and Kop. Point Wadhwa and Kop open their article with a description of AI’s failures, potential misuse, and how the media’s narrative has exacerbated the danger of AI before it settles on a powerful lead: The duo’s article then goes on to describe the nature of quantum computers and the current state of research before settling on its next important point: They also describe the problem with current encryption standards and the need for quantum-resistant technology and new standards to prevent corporate and national secrets from being exposed to the US’ adversaries: Finally, the article ends with a call for common sense legislation:...

The appeal was a ruling on a lawsuit filed last year by a collective of attorneys and non-profits who claim that the December 2017 decision (called the “2018 Order” in the lawsuit) made by the FCC to repeal net neutrality laws was illegal. The decision is quite a long one, and it’s a little difficult to read (I don’t think I’ve ever before read a legal document that seriously used the phrase “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”)....

The 110-year old power plant, Old Rainbow, is being allowed to become a cryptocurrency mining farm, after being granted approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Proposal documents submitted to the FERC say the mining machines will be placed in just one part of the building, and there are plans to expand; presumably if the endeavor proves profitable. Cryptocurrency mining operations at Old Rainbow will be staffed and run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year....

As a result, businesses are also consuming more data than ever before, and this trend will only grow. But our tech-loving ways could cause lasting damage to the planet. While the transition to the cloud has promised to solve many of our data overload problems, data centers are now producing the same amount of emissions as the global airline industry. As COP26 comes to a close, one of the biggest challenges international leaders have failed to address is setting tighter and clearer regulations for the exponentially growing cloud industry....

— Mustafa Suleyman (@mustafasuleymn) December 5, 2019 That sister is Google, DeepMind’s sister company under the Alphabet umbrella. Alphabet’s already had its share of shake-up this week after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped aside so Google CEO Sundar Pichai could take over as CEO of both companies. Now, reports The Verge’s James Vincent, Suleyman’s joining Jeff Dean at Google AI to work on policy. This sounds like a good thing because Google’s current AI policy isn’t fit to be considered a rough draft....

While retail business was hurt at unprecedented levels in the wake of COVID-19, their loss turned into a big gain for digital retailers. In fact, eCommerce sales are expected to be up by 18 percent by the end of this year. And next year, global online sales could approach nearly $5 trillion. That’s a roundabout way of saying that if you’re a retailer who isn’t focusing a decent portion of your time and effort into executing a sound digital marketing campaign, you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot....

For budding aerial photographers and videographers, the most important change may be the new camera. The Mavic Air 2 features a 48 megapixel, 1/2-inch sensor capable of shooting 4K video at 60 fps at 160mbps and 8K video timelapses. The sensor features pixel binning to create higher quality 12-megapixel images, or you can use the full 48MP resolution when needed. It can also shoot HDR video (at up 4K 30 fps) and slow-motion at up to 240fps in 1080p....

In May, a Wisconsin health care agency, Tenderness Health Care, posted a job ad on Facebook looking for personal care workers. According to Facebook’s “Why am I seeing this ad” pop-up, when the agency purchased the ad, it asked Facebook to not show it to anyone over 54 years of age. And they asked Facebook to show it specifically to people who have “African American multicultural affinity.” Facebook, apparently, complied....

Learned fear is a condition that scientists don’t know a whole lot about. The human brain is mysterious and the fear response is believed to occur in parts of if that are incredibly difficult to scan with non-invasive measuring devices. Up front: You can’t just slap an EEG helmet on someone’s head and measure their brainwaves to determine how they respond to fear. But, the China team was able to solicit the aid of 13 subjects who already had invasive brain-monitoring systems....

To get the Email Protection tool, you have to sign up for a free @duck.com address. The tool will then remove hidden trackers from emails sent to this address, before forwarding them to your regular inbox. You can currently access the beta version by joining the private waiting list. To sign-up, open the DuckDuckGo app for iOS or Android, then navigate through Settings, Beta Features, and finally Email Protection, to find the option to join the waiting list....

In another sign of just how ridiculous the US justice system has become, Elon Musk’s lawyers are today defending the billionaire in a US District Court over a defamation suit by claiming the person he called a “child rapist” and accused of marrying a 12-year-old girl in Thailand is wrong to infer that the term “pedo guy” is meant to imply he is a pedophile. A cave diver named Vernon Unsworth was engaged in aiding a youth soccer team that’d gotten stuck in a cave in Thailand last summer when Musk heard about the situation and decided to insert himself into it....

Or in other words, if you don’t use a VPN, you’re practically walking through a digital thunderstorm in a t-shirt. You’re unprotected and extremely vulnerable to attack from cybercriminals. For your sake, check out four monster deals going right now on the best VPN coverage around, including discounts of over 90 percent. And if you use the coupon code FIREWORK15, you can also save an additional 15 percent off....

To many, escooters seem like the vital cog in last-mile mobility solutions in urban areas. They’re highly accessible, environmentally friendly, affordable, and there’s plenty of variety to choose from. Just this morning, I counted four different brands blocking the sidewalk in my street. I feel like in 2021 we were just starting (at least in Europe) to see escooters transition from something that drunk people and teenage boys ride short distances for kicks, to a legitimate form of short trip transport....