Just a few short years ago, who would have ever thought they’d care about video backgrounds? But now, with video meetings and conferencing a daily part of many of our lives, you actually have to pay attention to your surroundings, the environment happening in your video communications, and, most importantly, what it says about you. XSplit V Cam instantly adds an extra dash of professionalism to virtually all of your live video sessions, offering custom background options that replace the reality of the three-ring circus happening behind you with slick, attractive new possibilities....

*Available on HBO Max in the US only at no extra cost to subscribers. pic.twitter.com/bU1Lmg5YDA — Wonder Woman 1984 (@WonderWomanFilm) November 19, 2020 To clarify, the film will debut in theaters in the US on December 25, and will arrive on HBO Max on the same day. In international markets, where HBO Max isn’t available — and where, dare I suggest, COVID has been rendered a much less significant threat than it has in the US — the film will debut in theaters on December 16....

This exciting little fossil micro-dinosaur named Oculudentavis khaungraae is from the middle of the Cretaceous period, from a stage known as the Cenomanian. The skull looks remarkably bird-like and a number of features suggest Oculudentavis is related to the early ancestors of modern birds. The fossil also appears to have preserved some of the dinosaur’s original bodily material. The researchers from China and the US who studied the fossil subjected it to CT analysis (computed tomography, which uses X-rays to produce a series of cross-section images of a specimen) to examine the internal structure....

Lu Weibing, the head of Xiaomi’s spin-off brand Redmi, will now take over Lei Jun’s responsibilities. In other major changes, former president Lin Bin was promoted to the company vice president, and CFO Zhou Capital was promoted to president of international business. In the letter, Lei Jun said, “Next year will be an offensive year for Xiaomi’s 5G business, and it will also be a key year for Xiaomi to promote mobile phone + AIoT....

Now, the Chinese tech firm wants to grab more eyeballs by launching TVs under its spun-off Redmi brand. Today, it launched a trio of 4K TVs under the Redmi Smart TV X Series brand in India starting at ₹32,000 ($450). These three TVs, with screen sizes of 50-inches, 55-inches, and 65-inches, come with support for standards such as Dolby Vision, HDR10+, Dolby+ DTS virtual, and HDMI 2.1. Before we talk more about these TVs, let’s take a look at their specifications....

Students with high math anxiety perform worse in standardised math tests and school exams. Anxious thoughts interfere with recalling math-related facts and procedures, and also with performing these procedures well. This is often described as the experience of having your mind go blank. Our new research shows that math anxiety does not only affect how children do in exams, it also affects their ability to learn new mathematical concepts and procedures in class....

A number of companies have actually succeeded in trademarking and “owning” colors that their competitors can’t use. For instance, Tiffany & Co has trademarked its shade of blue, T-Mobile magenta, and UPS its “pullman brown.” Your company can also attempt to trademark a color, but it won’t be that easy. Know the legal requirements The Lanham Act defines trademarks as, “any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination thereof” that’s used to, “identify and distinguish one set of goods or services from other sources....

To clinch the top spot, YouTube generated $138 million in user spending, according to data from app market monitor SensorTower. US-based users accounted for nearly 70 percent of its revenue, followed by Japan and the UK with 7 and 4 percent respectively. This represents a 220-percent growth in revenue year-over-year, the report further notes. Tencent-backed photo editing tool Kwai came in second, followed by Chinese video sharing sensation TikTok in third....

Over the past winter, and sporadically ever since, I’ve been using virtual the video game-like cycle training platform Zwift and a Tacx NEO indoor smart trainer. It’s allowed me to exercise with focus and efficiency when I’m crunched on time or the weather outside is not so great (or you know, lockdown). But I’ve had a huge problem with its “companion app” — and I’m not alone — but I’ve finally found a fix!...

Obesity is characterized by an increase in adipose tissue, what most people would call fat. All mammals possess two types of adipose tissue. White tissue, or white fat, is where energy is stored. Brown tissue, or brown fat, aids in heat production by burning fat through energy expenditure. Both are composed of adipocytes, which are special cells designed to store fat. As we age, however, the body gradually gets less efficient in using brown adipose tissue — which you may have experienced in the form of slower metabolism that comes with age....

The research was conducted by scientists from Harvard, Chung-Ang University in South Korea, and the University of Nebraska Omaha. It involved the creation and development of an AI-powered soft robotics system designed to be worn as an exosuit. It works by assisting your movements with robotics, thus lowering the metabolic load – how much energy you have to spend to do something – it takes for walking and running. According the team’s research paper: The exosuit uses artificial intelligence to determine the most effective way to assist with the wearer’s motions....

The apps in question — Sun Pro Beauty Camera and Funny Sweet Beauty Selfie Camera — were also found to have “more advanced functionality than your average adware,” according to researchers at Wandera. Intrusive out-of-app ads are more of an annoyance than a critical threat, but can also cause battery drain and infect devices with malware. The two apps included requests for more permissions than usual, allowing them to record audio without users’ consent and serve full-screen ads even without opening them....

Today, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer announced that he’s stepping down from the position after spending 13 years at the company. He will transition within the organization to a part-time role by 2022. Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Facebook’s chief of hardware division, will take over Schroepfer’s position gradually. Here are five noteworthy things you should know about the outgoing CTO. 1. Prestigious work history Schroepfer joined Facebook in 2008 as the vice president of engineering when the company was expanding its reach in the world....

But in reality, supermoons are not huge at all. There are in fact countless misunderstandings about the Moon and how it appears in the sky. Here are five such examples – and how to disprove them yourself. The supermoon is huge From an observer’s point of view, a supermoon is approximately just 14% bigger than when it’s smallest. That said, if you were viewing a normal moon and a supermoon side by side, you would be able to spot the difference....

Nayib Bukele’s splurging on bitcoin has been lauded by crypto advocates, but criticized in the traditional financial world. The IMF has been among his most vociferous detractors. The International Monetary Fund has repeatedly urged El Salvador to ditch Bitcoin’s legal sentence — much to Bukele’s chagrin. Here’s a brief history of the dispute between the lender and the Central American nation. March 2021: El Salvador pursues IMF funding Days after Bukele’s ruling party won a landslide election victory, a government official tells Reuters that El Salvador is seeking $1....

Black Mirror projects the negative consequences of social media, while artificial intelligence turns rogue in The 100 and Better Than Us. The potential extinction of the human race is up for grabs in Travellers, and Altered Carbon frets over the separation of human consciousness from the body. And Humans and Westworld see trouble ahead for human-android relations. Narratives like these have a long lineage. Science fiction has been articulating our hopes and fears about technological disruption at least since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)....

The grass is green; the sky is blue, and Adobe has an ironclad grip on the creative software market. If you’re trying to undertake virtually any digital creative project, chances are there’s not only an Adobe Creative Cloud app for that project, but it’s also probably the market leader. Of course, with a suite of more than 20 killer apps, mastering everything in the Adobe Creative Cloud is a tall order....

The iPod is now dead. Apple today discontinued the last iPod model it still sold, the iPod Touch. And lest you think the company has another media player around the corner, its press release made it pretty clear the iPod is no more. Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing, Greg Joswiak, says: I repeat: the iPod is dead. Today, the spirit of iPod lives on. We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products, from the iPhone to the Apple Watch to HomePod mini, and across Mac, iPad, and Apple TV....

Jio is currently India’s biggest telecom network provider with more than 388 million subscribers. At the time of Facebook’s deal, Jio’s enterprise value was $65.95 billion. However, Silver Lake’s deal comes at a 12.5% premium of that — $68.07 billion. In a statement, Egon Durban, Silver Lake Co-CEO and managing partner, said the market potential addressed by Jio is enormous: Silver Lake has an impressive portfolio of investments that includes Twitter, Alibaba Group, Airbnb, Alphabet’s Verily and Waymo units, and City football group (Manchester City and its sister teams in the United States, Australia, China, Japan, Spain, and Uruguay....

Bruno López produced the video by using a combination of Spotify data, Python scripts, and Generative Adversarial Networks. He first created a script that downloaded the album covers for every track featured on Spotify’s official editorial playlists. The result was a dataset of around 50,000 covers with individual resolutions of 640 x 640. This was used as training data for Nvidia’s StyleGAN2 architecture, the same system that previously brought us pizzas, fursonas, and My Little Pony characters that don’t exist....